FIRST LECTURE. 



LIFE FROM A PHYSICAL STANDPOINT. 



A. E. DOLBEAR. 



I SUPPOSE there is no question about which science concerns 

 itself and everybody has more interest in than this one of the 

 nature of life. Some pretend to think we know nothing about 

 it and never can know anything, others are quite as sure that 

 we know it to be correlated with other forms of force and in 

 some way convertible into them, while a third class may hold 

 an agnostic position, content to wait until knowledge shall 

 grow so as to include the nature of life. Still it may be 

 doubted if there be any thoughtful person who does not hold 

 some sort of a theory about it which he expects will be sub- 

 stantiated, and it is quite certain if any demonstration of the 

 nature of life were to be given to-day, there would be a great 

 multitude of persons who would at once declare they had 

 always so held. This expectancy shows itself in so many 

 ways, that one may be sure that nearly every person has some 

 theory of things, some scheme into which he contrives to fit all 

 kinds of facts. That is to say we can't get along without some 

 sort of philosophy and we make our own if there be none 

 otherwise provided. Even those who pretend to contemn all 

 schematic attempts in knowledge and who mildly reprove 

 such efforts by calling them speculations are easily found to 

 have some pet scheme of their own which finds favor in their 

 eyes. 



Now there are speculations and speculations. There is a 

 kind that has been common from the beginning until now, 

 when imagination has full sway with no manner of regard for 

 data or for appropriate facts at all. Such an one was the com- 

 monly held view as to the origin of the world and especially of 



