CHAPTER VIII 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 



If heat is the mother of all life then water is 

 surely its father. We came from the water, we are 

 still absolutely dependent upon it, two-thirds of 

 our entire body is nothing but water. In our 

 physical frame we carry with us many aquatic 

 memories, water-logged characters which point to 

 distant amphibious or submarine ancestors. The 

 mark of the sea is upon us though our home may 

 be in the heart of a continent. 



The simplest of beings are inhabitants of water 

 — mere droplets of movement, hesitant on the 

 threshold of life, as yet neither quite plants nor 

 animals. In comparison, a forming crystal may 

 seem a great advance, a restless oil globule sug- 

 gests a sentient organism. But the droplet of life 

 can afford to rest motionless. It treasures in its 

 minute nucleus a sdmething possessed by neither 

 crystal nor globule. 



It would almost seem as if water, especially sea 

 water, had some slumbering force within itself, a 

 dormant sympathy for organic life which needed 

 merely the slightest stimulus to awaken and to take 

 its share in dynamic animation. A suspended cob- 

 web vivifying the air about it into complex ac- 



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