THE MUSEUM. 



A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Research in Natural Science. 



Vol. II. 



ALBION, N. Y., FEBRUARY 15, 1896. 



No. 4 



Science Gleanings. 



A previous number traced briefly 

 some of the laws rf world forming; 

 this will treat mainly of life as the 

 foundation of world inhabiting. Mat- 

 ter and force were the factors that 

 evolved a chaotic world. But, so far, 

 it was a physical force operating 

 through physical laws, and the result 

 was an unhabitable world, and there- 

 for not a completed world; not finished 

 according to the Divine Record. A 

 world repulsive to our very thoughts. 

 Banish every form of life, animal and 

 vegetable from our globe; wrap all 

 life in the shroud of death; and the 

 human mind shrinks back instinctively 

 from such a picture. 



Physicial power, operating through 

 natural law, could fit up a world for 

 living occupants, but physicial power 

 through natural law could never take 

 one of the infinite number of particles 

 of matter that make up our earth and 

 mould it into a living form. No 

 change of its substance or in its envir- 

 onments, no chemical action or pro- 

 cess of evolution, or acquirement of 

 energy could turn one atom of dead 

 inorganic matter into a thing of life. 



Vital force only can do that; possi- 

 bly in unison, but at all events, con- 

 troling physical force. For if there is 

 a well established fact in science at 

 the present time, it is that life springs 

 only from antecedent life; and that 

 the will only is, and can only be, our 



standard of measuring any kind of 

 force or power. When we attempt to 

 do even the simplest act, it is our will 

 that judges of the amount of force or 

 power necessary to do the act, and 

 commands forth the muscular force 

 sufficient to that end, and neither more 

 nor less than needed, if the will has 

 not misjudged or been imposed upon 

 by false appearances. 



If these are facts, our globe must 

 have forever rolled in its orbit, a thing 

 devoid of life and living beings, with 

 all its physical machinery and natural 

 laws, perchance complete, had not a 

 vital force gone forth, guided and 

 operated by a Divine Will, to animate, 

 and bring into being. 



But all kinds of matter are not cap- 

 able of being so animated. The stone 

 from its quarry, the mineral from its 

 mine, the dust on which we tread, the 

 soil in our field, must always remain 

 lifeless matter. These, too, have a 

 useful record in the volume of nature 

 which may be traced at another time. 



Life has a -'physicial basis," a cer- 

 tain assemblance of elements combined 

 chemically, to which the name proto- 

 plasm — meaning first moulding — 

 has been applied, for which life — the 

 vital principle — has a liking, and aside 

 from which, it is never found. With- 

 out protoplasm, life as an isolated 

 thing does not e.xist on our globe. 



We may say for sake of illustration, 

 protoplasm is the dwelling, life is the 



