66 Proceed 'nif/s oj IndUnid Acddciini of i^riciicr. 



"Life, like matter, is indestrnctiblc There has always heeii a 

 certain amount of life in this world, and theic will always he the 

 same amount. You cannot create life: you ciuuiot di'strdy life: you 

 cannot multiply life." 



Afiain. he says : — 



"I l)elieve our bodies are comiKised of myriads of iidinite<iiual 

 entities, each of which is a unit of life, which hand toi^ether to huild 

 a man." 



.Sir Oliver Lod^e does not attemi(t to tell us what life is. h\it is ((uite 

 po.sitive that it is )iot a form of enerjiy. and one of his reasons is that it is 

 without linnt. Life can create new life through countless generations and 

 without limit. While Edison seems equally contident that there is oidy a 

 limited amount of life in the world; that there has always heen a certjiin 

 amount, which can be neither increased nor diminished. 



Theories of life and theories of evolution, as I understand them, are close- 

 ly interrelated. AVhile evolution is no longer a mere theory. h;it is an 

 accepted and a demonstrated fact, the liniit> within which it is thus 

 demonstrated and acepted are, it seems to me. far from beinu settled, and 

 it is difficult to determine where fact ends and imagination begins. Thus. 

 we are told by the evolutionist of a germ, — an atom of protoplasm that in 

 some mysterious way and at some time in the dim and distant past ap- 

 peared in pi'imeval slime, and from which all liviim things have been 

 evolved, and that this germ was the bearer of life to or.r globe, of course 

 evolution, as thus conceived, assumes the pre-existenee, somewhere, of this 

 initial germ, this life bearer. If we become incpusitive concerning the life 

 with which this initial germ was charged, they sidestep, and we are 

 blandly informed that evolution does not deal with origins or with begin- 

 nings, — it only deals with the way things have gone on since the germ ai>- 

 peared. I find that where knowledge ends, science does not hesitate to 

 .guess, surmise and imagine. So various guesses aiv ventured concerning 

 the germ, with its inseparable companion or property, life: among others, 

 that the original germ may have been wafted to us from space on the wings 

 of an atom of cosmic dust. T.ut as our earth is itself, relatively to the 

 lunverse. only a speck of dust in illinutable space, this guess only transfers 

 the genesis of the germ to some other speck of cosmic dust, and tells us 

 nothing of the life it carried. Another guess is that through some myster- 

 ious process of nature's chemistry. i)rotoplasm happened to form, with 

 life as one of its insei)arable jn-operties. and chemists have been industri- 

 oiisly trying to learn just bow this ha])]ien(Ml and to make artificial proto- 

 plasm, and with it. of coiu-se. lite. As yel I have seen no record that they 

 have succeeded. But suppose they doV Will that tell us what life is? 



And now, with much timidity, as against some of these guesses and im- 

 aginings of science, I venture my suggestions, which are. of course, only my 

 guesses and imaginings. To me it seems a certainty that back of all the 

 complexity of that which we call nature, is a suprtMne intelligence, which is 

 made manifest l)y the operation of law, — law which so far as we can grasp 

 the idea of infinity is infinite in its oi^eration, — law which in the reach of 

 its grasp, as well as in the certitude of its control, passes any boundary 

 which we have lieen able to reach with any instrument yet devised, — 



