EXTRACT XL. A. 



PHYSICO-METAPHYSICAL. 



On Life. 



WHAT is life ? is a question that has exercised the 

 thinking mind all along the ages, and that continues to 

 be asked with an earnestness and persistency, more even 

 than pristine in strength and volume, but the answer has 

 not yet been given. Neither the simple and direct 

 thinker, the acute observer, the profound formulator, 

 nor the scientific or brilliant exponent, have been able to 

 vouchsafe a reply which will, or can, satisfy the ques- 

 tioners ; and, therefore, the problem is likely increasingly 

 to continue to excite curiosity, and stimulate yet further 

 thought, it may be, to the remotest generations; and 'tis 

 well it should be so, for are not the wits of every genera- 

 tion thus sharpened on those of its predecessors by such 

 exercise, and are not its views of the subject in all its 

 aspects thereby deepened and broadened ? Thus it is, 

 that the curiosity of mankind is continually inciting to 

 enquiry, and enabling it to add to its stock of knowledge, 

 and to the attainment and exercise of a truer appreciation 

 and appraisement of its present state and future progress. 

 Therefore, though, as thus indicated, its " bump of 

 curiosity," together with "a little knowledge," is not 

 unattended with danger, as the history of the race 

 abundantly testifies, it has been of the utmost value in 

 the progress of civilisation and the advancement of science 

 in all its branches. 



On life, as it seizes on and vitalises the raw materials 



