26 PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 



found the whole of the vast array of living forms, with 

 which we are surrounded, constantly growing, increasing, 

 ing, and disappearing ; the animal constantly 

 attracting, modifying, and applying to its sustenance the 

 matter of the vegetable kingdom, which derived its support 

 from the absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. 

 And so constant and universal is this absorption, waste, 

 and reproduction, that it may be said with perfect cer- 

 tainty that there is left in no one of our bodies at the present 

 moment a millionth part of the matter of which they were 

 originally formed I We have seen, again, that not only 

 is the living matter derived from the inorganic world, but 

 that the forces of that matter are all of them correlative 

 with and convertible into those of inorganic nature. 



This, for our present purposes, is the best view of the 

 present condition of organic nature which I can lay before 

 you : it gives you the great outlines of a vast picture, 

 which you must fill up by your own study. 



In the next lecture I shall endeavour in the same way 

 to go back into the past, and to sketch in the same broad 

 manner the history of life in epochs preceding our own. 



