LIFE'S GEXESIS. 75 



the boiling point. Yet there are exceptions : 

 for instance, the spores of bacteria cannot be 

 boiled to death, but must be burned heated 

 to nearly a hundred degrees (F.) above the 

 boiling-point. 



Still there is difficulty with this conception 

 of Biogenesis, and the difficulty springs from 

 Evolution. If our planet evolved from an 

 inorganic condition to an organic at some 

 time in the past when it had cooled down to 

 a heat-point consistent with Life, as is gen- 

 erally said by scientists, there must have been 

 a transition from a pre-vital to a vital stage. 

 Which, then, has to go to the wall as a uni- 

 versal principle of Nature, Evolution, or Bio- 

 genesis .' Thus we run back again to the 

 edge of that chasm between the animate and 

 inanimate realms which Evolution has not 

 yet been able fully to pass. The most colossal 

 step in Nature, that from Matter to Life, 

 or from the dead to the living, Science with 

 her experimental proof lias not been able to 

 take. Meanwhile Nature's laboratory before 

 our eye is always doing just thus : transform- 

 ing the inorganic into the organic. It may be 

 said that in a way the inorganic is forever 

 seeking to become organic, it wants to live. 

 The end and scope of Cosmos and Diacosmos 

 is to be Biocosmos, in which they have their 

 higher fulfillment. 



