Mineral Causes. 127 



either his wisdom or his ignorance, he is indeed quite 

 at liberty to restrict the term life, as a secondary or 

 complex natural energy, to vegetals or animals or any 

 other organisms he chooses. But when a scientist 

 refuses to trace life's origin below vegetals and animals, 

 either he is wilfully trying to blindfold humanity, or 

 he is exposing his ignorance, vanity, and incapacity. 



The striking parodies of vegetal forms by minerals 

 should warn us against a too exclusive classifica- 

 tion, for nature does not produce a likeness in form 

 without a likeness also in the law of form. Man, 

 however, and particularly a specialist, is terribly con- 

 ceited in his opinions. He invariably forgets that 

 he but stands on a transitory pinnacle of knowledge. 

 His horizon may truly be to-day unbroken, and his 

 learning the apex of his century ; but to-morrow and 

 succeeding days other pinnacles shoot up and over- 

 shadow him until he is left as but a gargoyle in the 

 depths of ignorance below. 



Consistently, therefore, with our materialistic system, 

 we class energy and life as identical in origin and 

 evolution, no matter what differences may arise in 

 their subsequent manifestations.' We have thus no 

 need to trace the origin and evolution of life separately 

 from the origin and evolution of energy. But in our 

 investigations into the evolution of vegetals and 

 animals in succeeding chapters, we shall eventually 

 show that life in them is but an evolution of the 

 simpler energies of the minerals, the chief being 

 magnetism. The so-called mystery of life shall thus 



