THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 



and veined and illumined with forked lightnings, 

 a world of rolling rivers and heaving seas, activity, 

 physical and chemical, everywhere. On such a 

 world life appeared, bringing no new element or 

 force, but setting up a new activity in matter, an 

 activity that tends to check and control the natural 

 tendency to the dissipation and degradation of 

 energy. The question is, Did it arise through some 

 transformation of the existing energy, or out of the 

 preexisting conditions, or was it supplementary to 

 them, an addition from some unknown source ? 

 Was it a miraculous or a natural event? We shall 

 answer according to our temperaments. 



One sees with his mind's eye this stream of en- 

 ergy, which we name the material universe, flowing 

 down the endless cycles of time ; at a certain point in 

 its course, a change comes over its surface; what 

 we call life appears, and assumes many forms; at a 

 point farther along in its course, life disappears, and 

 the eternal river flows on regardless, till, at some 

 other point, the same changes take place again. 

 Life is inseparable from this river of energy, but it 

 is not coextensive with it, either in time or in space. 



In midsummer what river-men call "the blossom- 

 ing of the water" takes place in the Hudson River; 

 the water is full of minute vegetable organisms; 

 they are seasonal and temporary; they are born of 

 the midsummer heats. By and by the water is clear 

 again. Life in the universe seems as seasonal and 

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