126 From Matter to Man. 



fantastic methods scientists have adopted to unravel 

 it, as to the fear of the superstitious to approach it. 

 If a traveller exploring the Nile stopped at the First 

 Cataract and declared any other source undiscover- 

 able because his boat could ascend no higher, we 

 should call him a fool. Similar measure ought to be 

 meted out to those specialists who adopt similar 

 tactics while professing to discover the source of life. 

 Scientists have probed, massacred, and dissected in- 

 numerable living things to the horror of the anti- 

 vivisectionists for years, and because the death of the 

 animal stopped further examination, or its bared 

 bones and muscles showed no mysterious stream of 

 vitality leading from the known into the unknown, or 

 from the organic into the inorganic, the origin of life 

 was dubbed a mystery, its ken transcendental, its 

 source supernatural and undiscoverable, and any 

 attempt to penetrate its secret dangerous. 



Life has thus ever been erroneously restricted to 

 vegetals and animals, because men persisted in 

 ignoring the fundamental basis of all life, material 

 energy. That life reduced to its elementary form, as 

 a mode of motion in matter, must be related more or 

 less to all modes of motion in matter, is inevitable. 

 Hence, it must exist rudimentarily, not only in 

 minerals, liquids, gases, and molecules, but in the 

 atoms themselves. In other words, energy and life 

 are fundamentally identical. 



As man writes his science and philosophy solely 

 for himself, to suit himself, and to coincide with 



