CHAPTER XVII 

 LIFE 



LIFE COMES ONLY FROM LIFE HAECKEL'S MONERA. 

 BACTERIA PHAGOCYTES, OR WHITE CORPUSCLES. 



HERBERT SPENCER very truly says : " To those 

 who accept the general doctrine of Evolution it 

 needs scarcely to be pointed out that classifications 

 are subjective conceptions which have no absolute 

 demarcations in nature corresponding to them. They 

 are appliances by which we limit and arrange the 

 matters under investigation, and so facilitate our 

 thinking." 



This remark, prefacing his endeavor to define what 

 Life is, and intended to lead up by successive steps 

 to his definition ultimately given, though true in its 

 general bearing, is certainly not applicable in our 

 present state of knowledge to the classification which 

 separates that which has life, from that which has it 

 not. 



Like almost every term of wide signification, it is 

 difficult to define exactly what Life is. Herbert 



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