146 WHAT IS LIFE? 



reach your fellow creature and to try to make him 

 your slave ? For slavery exists now as of old, it has 

 only altered its phase. If you will not be my servant, 

 says the unprincipled capitalist, then starve, and so may 

 your children. And how does this question operate in 

 all political, commercial, social, domestic affairs ? New 

 views immediately crop up one by one. 



Now we have the conception of an atom a gaseous 

 atom 1 wafted to and fro by the wind. It finds its 

 suitable habitation the ovary, and then of its own 

 inherent powers it slowly accumulates to itself molecular 

 matter, vastly complex, to be ultimately a thinking, 

 feeling, self-conscious organism, and we call it a Man. 

 A man with a soul. A soul which ceases to exist when 

 the brain ceases to be active this is undoubted. 



More than this, the tendency of modern science 

 shows that this central object which never dies, which 

 regenerates molecular matter, is a gaseous object 

 Put some water under the exhausting air-pump, rarefy 

 the air and notice the little tiny air bubbles collecting 

 at the bottom of the water, and ascending through the 

 water. Gaseous bodies tend always to get to their habitat 

 the gaseous envelope which surrounds the solid and 

 liquid constituents of the earth. We know that altera- 

 tions of atmospheric pressure take place hour by hour, 

 tending to carry gaseous molecules from beneath the 

 earth to the surface of the earth. We know that when 

 our bodies are buried, the order of regeneration of life 

 becomes in death inverse, the solid becomes in great 

 part gaseous, but try our best the gaseous does not 



1 The reverting of the organic solid and liquid organic matter into 

 the gaseous, may often be seen in a dead dog lying on the sea shore, 

 It is blown out with the accumulating gases. 



