30 LIVING AND NOT LIVING MATTER. 



specially created, would be to accuse Nature 

 of bungling. Nature makes no such 

 mistakes, her chain extends without a 

 break from eternity to everlasting, by 

 continuous infinitesimal links up through 

 the whole of the universe ; through not- 

 living matter, living matter, life and 

 mind, onwards, perhaps as an inconceivable 

 circle, without either beginning or end. 



There is, indeed, no sharp and distinct 

 line marking off living from not-living 

 matter, as is still the orthodox belief of 

 biologists, any more than there is marking 

 off inorganic from organic, or animal from 

 vegetable matter, or vertebrate from 

 invertebrate animals ; or there is between 

 the infant, the boy and the man, or between 

 the sexually immature and mature ; all 

 are (indistinct) grades in development or 

 evolution. 



Man finds himself a being marvellously 

 constructed of matter, in a material universe 

 apparently evolved from atoms endowed 

 with an innate motion that forced them 

 to construct the universe. As a reasoning 

 creature he is driven to be not satisfied 

 with the knowledge that the atoms have 

 innate motion, but must inquire after 

 the origin of this mysterious power in the 



