158 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



they good-humoredly rallied the lecturer for coming among 

 them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this 

 large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, the finest 

 samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient 

 landmarks, and transjDorted the conception of life's origin 

 to an indefinitely distant past. 



This leads us to the gist of our present inquiry, which 

 is this : Does life belong to what we call matter, or is it an 

 independent principle inserted into matter at some suitable 

 epoch — say when the physical conditions became such as to 

 permit of the development of life ? Let us put the ques- 

 tion with all the reverence due to a faith and culture in 

 which we all were cradled — a faith and culture, moreover, 

 which are the undeniable historic antecedents of our pres- 

 ent enlightenment. I say, let us put the question rever- 

 ently, but let us also put it clearly and definitely. There 

 are the strongest grounds for believing that during a cer- 

 tain period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit 

 to be, the theatre of life. Whether this was ever a nebu- 

 lous period, or merely a molten period, does not much 

 matter ; and if we revert to the nebulous condition, it is 

 because the probabilities are really on its side. Our ques- 

 tion is this : Did creative energy pause until the nebulous 

 matter had condensed, until the earth had been detached, 

 until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth's 

 vicinity as to permit a crust to gather round the planet ? 

 Did it wait until the air was isolated, until the seas wex*e 

 formed, until evaporation, condensation, and the descent of 

 rain had begun, until the eroding forces of the atmosphere 

 had weathered and decomposed the molten rocks so as to 

 form soils, until the svm's rays had become so tempered by 

 distance and by waste as to be chemically fit for the de- 

 compositions necessary to vegetable life ? Having waited 

 through those ^Eons until the proper conditions had set in, 

 did it send the fiat forth, " Let Life be ! " ? These ques- 



