THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 



Science traces the chain of cause and effect every- 

 where and finds no break. It follows down animal 

 life till it merges in the vegetable, though it cannot 

 put its finger or its microscope on the point where 

 one ends and the other begins. It finds forms that 

 partake of the characteristics of both. It is rea- 

 sonable to expect that the vegetable merges into 

 the mineral by the same insensible degrees, and that 

 the one becomes the other without any real dis- 

 continuity. The change, if we may call it such, 

 probably takes place in the interior world of matter 

 among the primordial atoms, where only the imag- 

 ination can penetrate. In that sleep of the ultimate 

 corpuscle, what dreams may come, what miracles 

 may be wrought, what transformations take place ! 

 When I try to think of life as a mode of motion in 

 matter, I seem to see the particles in a mystic dance, 

 a whirling maze of motions, the infinitely little peo- 

 ple taking hold of hands, changing partners, facing 

 this way and that, doing all sorts of impossible 

 things, like jumping down one another's throats, or 

 occupying one another's bodies, thrilled and vibrat- 

 ing at an inconceivable rate. 



The theological solution of this problem of life 

 fails more and more to satisfy thinking men of to- 

 day. Living things are natural phenomena, and we 

 feel that they must in some way be an outcome of 

 the natural order. Science is more and more famil- 

 iarizing our minds with the idea that the universe 

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