THE UNIVERSAL BENEFICENCE 



the nest of another bird, that is the same thing — 

 life is still triumphant. But when the germs of a 

 contagious disease — tuberculosis, diphtheria, scar- 

 let fever — invade the human system and finally 

 result in its destruction, then dissolution is trium- 

 phant; all this delicately and elaborately organized 

 matter comes to naught. In this we see the failure 

 of the tendency or impulsion in matter which re- 

 sults in organization — the mystery and the miracle 

 of vitality, as Tyndall called it, and the triumph 

 of the contrary impulse or disorganization, unless 

 we regard the destructive and death-dealing germs 

 themselves as a triumph of organization, which, 

 from the scientific point of view, they surely are. 

 Then we have Nature playing one hand against the 

 other. From our point of view it is like pulling 

 down a temple and reducing the bricks and stones 

 to dust for the use of ants. But who shall say that 

 Nature is not just as careful of the ant as of the 

 man? — which is, of course, a distasteful bit of 

 news to the man. 



When one thinks of the myriads of minute living 

 organisms that pervade and make up his own body, 

 of their struggles and activities, their antagonisms 

 and cooperations, their victories and defeats, — the 

 cells cooperating and building up the organs, the 

 organs cooperating and building up the body, the 

 phagocytes policing the blood and destroying the in 

 vading germs, the intestinal flora contending with 



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