226 From Matter to Man. 



of energy in the locomotive, and requires no effort 

 even of consciousness ; for when we are asleep our 

 food is digested, oxidised, converted into blood, and 

 passed automatically through all the other stages of 

 its usefulness, so long as it is associated with us. 



Life, notwithstanding its importance to us, is thus 

 by the evidence a mere adventitious existence, a sort 

 of haphazard or chance manifestation of eternally 

 living or moving matter in magnetic bodies such as 

 our own, which accident or chance conditions set 

 agoing on earth, which changed environments have 

 rendered more and more complex, and which natural 

 selection through automatic law maintains so long as 

 conditions are favourable. 



The evolution of life is thus neither more nor less 

 mysterious than the evolution of any other form of 

 material energy, but it requires a particular kind of 

 mechanism to exhibit it. The nature and complexity 

 of this organic mechanism, from its simplest to its 

 highest electric form, thus constitutes the sole differ- 

 ence between one form of life and another. That 

 human life should be deemed higher than any other 

 kind of life is a harmless infatuation, soothing to 

 weak minds and a sop to man's incurable vanity. 



(8) The Inter-relation of Life and Death. — In con- 

 nection with animal life, we may here mention that a 

 startling and strikingly suggestive problem, significant 

 of the times, recently stirred biological circles to their 

 utmost depths, respecting the relation of life to death 

 in organisms. As pointed out by Professors Ray 



