FIELD AND STUDY 



circuit of the waters from the earth to the clouds? 

 Circles, circles, everywhere. When does a body be- 

 gin to decay? At any precise moment? We uncon- 

 sciously look upon the decay of dead bodies as a 

 spontaneous process; we think of it as inevitable. 

 But under certain conditions dead bodies do not 

 decay, no change in them takes place; place them 

 beyond the reach of the hosts of micro-organisms 

 and they are safe. These two hosts, the destructive 

 and the constructive germs, what is their relation? 

 The destructive are in the air, the water, the soil, 

 and in our bodies; where are the constructive? 

 The ferments and the enzymes are in our own bod- 

 ies, but where does the body get them ? The cell is 

 the architect of the living body, but what is the 

 architect of the cell? We know its elementary con- 

 stituents, but what combines them, what guides 

 them, or inspires them to construct organs, and 

 inspires the organs to build up bodies? There we 

 are again with a chain that has but one end an 

 impossibility. 



Are the micro-organisms built up or pulled down 

 by other organisms, and so on ad infinitum? 



Astronomy appeals to more persons than geology 

 does. The ground underfoot is a commonplace affair 

 compared with the midnight skies. The doings on 

 our little earth, even during the lapses of geologic 

 time, are trivial matters beside the birth of worlds 

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