CHAPTER IV. 

 IN THE BEGINNING 



WE may now return to our constructive task with more con- 

 fidence. We have found that the world of life is not 

 separated from the inanimate world by a yawning gulf, that 

 would restrain us from thinking of the evolution of the one 

 from the other. When we push out to the very frontiers of 

 the living world we find tiny creatures whose life is hardly 

 worth calling " life " at all, though it may merit the Latin 

 title, " vitality." It consists merely of " metabolic pro- 

 cesses," for which it would be " absurd " to claim an imma- 

 terial principle. On the other hand, we have learned that 

 "dead matter" 1 is not the helpless and unpromising thing 

 it is often conceived to be. It is marvellously rich in 

 potentiality. When its atomic systems with their charges 

 of energy enter into higher combinations, we may expect 

 " properties different in kind," at all events vastly different, 

 from the properties of the elementary substances. When 

 we learn that in the tiny particle of plasm we have such a 

 combination of a remarkably elaborate type electrons 



1 A particularly stupid phrase for inorganic matter, that one meets in 

 religious writers. " Dead" means, not devoid of life, but deprived of 

 life. And the antithesis begs the whole question whether life is or is 

 not an immaterial principle. 



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