44 CELL INTELLIGENCE THE CAUSE OF EVOLUTION 



reasonable to expect that the vegetable merges into the 

 mineral by the same insensible degree, and that the one 

 becomes the other without any real discontinuity. The 

 change, if we may call it such, probably takes place in the 

 interior world of matter, among the primordial atoms 

 where only the imagination can penetrate. 



"Looked at in its relation to the whole, life appears 

 like a transient phenomenon of matter. I will not say 

 accidental; it seems inseparably bound up with cosmic 

 processes, but I may say fugitive, superficial, circum- 

 scribed. Life comes and goes ; it penetrates but a little 

 way into the earth ; it is confined to a certain range of tem- 

 perature, beyond a certain degree of cold on the one hand 

 it does not appear, and beyond a certain degree of heat on 

 the other hand, it is cut off; without water or moisture it 

 ceases, and without air it is not. It has evidently dis- 

 appeared from the moon and probably from the inferior 

 planets and it is doubtful if it has yet appeared on any of 

 the superior planets, save Mars. Life comes to matter as 

 the flowers come in the Spring when the time is ripe for 

 it, and it disappears when the time is overripe. Man ap- 

 pears in due course and has his little day upon the earth 

 but that day must as surely come to an end. 



"Yet can we conceive of the end of physical order? 

 The end of gravity? Or of cohesion? The air may dis- 

 appear, the water may disappear, combustion may cease, 

 but oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon will continue 

 somewhere." 



This statement is very interesting in that it shows how 

 life looks to a man in a chemical laboratory, who can by 

 reason of his peculiar occupation see life only as a chem- 

 ical force and action. He has had hold of the elephant's 

 tail. To him the elephant is like a rope. You will notice 

 that at no place does he even mention or consider the cell, 



