EXTRACT XL. c. 



LIFE WHAT IS IT? AND WHEN DOES IT BEGIN? 



THE above title and accompanying questions would seem 

 to require a treatise for their answer, and, after all, and at 

 the best, in the present ever-progressing state of science 

 (1902), it could only be tentative, as all preceding answers 

 to the questions have been ; nevertheless, every attempt at 

 an answer must allow, at any rate, the attempter an 

 opportunity of " taking stock " of his own and others' 

 knowledge on the subject, and, to that extent, be a 

 justification for placing on record any feeble effort he may 

 be able to make towards the answer. 



Life, in the concrete, is applicable as a descriptive term 

 to the distinctively organic phenomena both of the vege- 

 table and animal worlds, and signifies the opposite of dead, 

 or inert, terms etymologically, which apply to the condition 

 of matter known as inorganic. Life, physiologically, 

 implies a state of active, organic, and synthetic, as opposed 

 to a passive, analytic, material condition, in virtue of the 

 play of vital energy on organisable matter. Usually it 

 begins, or rather continues, in an infinitesimal degree, in 

 definite units of living matter, developed by, detached 

 from, or left by, living matter ; it cannot begin indepen- 

 dently in dead matter, and assume, or take on itself, the 

 characteristics of new life, therefore, a first creative effort at 

 least was necessary to initiate the long succession of life 

 forms which has unfolded itself in obedience to a Great 

 First c ause, and the law of evolution. The principle of life, 

 as thus detached from preceding life, or living matter, 

 may be latent, or dormant, for long periods at a time, or 



