18 MAN AN ADAPTIVE MECHANISM 



among birds and beasts and insects in their competi- 

 tion for food and habitat, but if we may believe the 

 revelations of the science of radio-activity a process 

 of transmutation, of disintegration of the atoms of one 

 element with simultaneous formation of another ele- 

 ment, is taking place in ever} 7 fragment of inanimate 

 matter, a process which parallels in character the more 

 transitory processes of life and death in organisms and 

 is probably a representation of the primary steps in 

 that great process of evolution by which all terrestrial 

 forms, organic and inorganic, have been evolved from 

 the original ether, by an action inconceivably slow, 

 continuous and admitting of no break in the series 

 from inanimate to animate forms. 



By the superficial observer only two kinds of phe- 

 nomena are distinguished in nature, the living and the 

 non-living; animate and inanimate matter; but to 

 the scientist nothing is dead. All matter participates 

 in the universal inter-atomic whirl, of which radio- 

 activity is a marvelous manifestation, and within 

 the atom there are worlds within worlds of concentri- 

 cally moving particles. The universe is a seething 

 caldron of continuous change, the basis of which 

 is motion. Motion underlies all change, whether 

 physical or chemical, in both animate and inani- 

 mate matter. Growth and decay are but relative 

 changes which express the common tendency of all 

 cosmic forces to equilibrium. 



The Coming of Life 



What initiated motion, science cannot tell us. In 

 the main, however, scientists agree in regarding the 



