Life as a Builder. 75 



to continue after the first has passed azvay. This 

 power then builds up the individual, and from that 

 individual originates another, and so on, giving us 

 the parental relation. In every vegetable and ani- 

 mal this power presides, giving rise to certain activ- 

 ities, which we sometimes call life — or better per- 

 haps, we regard the activities as the evidence that 

 the principle of Hfe is there, and we do this neces- 

 sarily from our notion of causality. That we do not 

 regard this agency as always active when it is pres- 

 ent, is evident in our experiments in the sprouting 

 of seeds. We apply certain conditions to call this 

 agency Into action, and not to create the agency it- 

 self. The agency once inactive in the germ, under 

 certain conditions, is called into activity and gives a 

 specific result — or rather a long train of results 

 which, from observation on other germs of the same 

 kind, can be predicted beforehand. This train of 

 results consists in building up by evolution, a com- 

 plicated structure from a single cell of simple struct- 

 ure ; in watching over that structure to secure its 

 welfare by adapting its parts and operations to the 

 world, in the same manner as the more general 

 forces of the universe seem to have arranged and 

 prepared the materials of the earth for the intro- 

 duction of the living principle itself. We can sum 

 up by saying that this force or principle is so far 

 uniform in its operations as to give us the simplest 

 notion of life, which all have, although they may 

 not be able to define it. And this principle that 

 impresses us as 07ie^ under the name of life, mani- 

 fests itself under hundreds of thousands of the most 



