190 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



these stages, formative, assimilative, and 

 generative, has its own process also the part 

 re-enacting the whole in order to be a part. 

 Now the definition of Life is best conceived 

 in these three terms, with their process. The 

 individual Farm which assimilates the ex- 

 ternal world to itself (so far as needful) and 

 ejects itself into the world as a new individ- 

 ual Form, is alive, and nothing else is. Such 

 a living Form is doubly creative, reproducing 

 itself within itself and reproducing itself in 

 another. It is said by many, perhaps by 

 most biologists, that Life cannot be defined, 

 that what they are trying to formulate ad- 

 mits of no formulation. Such is their inner 

 contradiction in this matter; still they seem 

 to push ahead all the same, seeking to define 

 what admits of no definition. For just this 

 definition, broadly taken, is their science, 

 which must be, therefore, the knowing of what 

 never can be known. But it is well that the 

 scientist on the whole is not logical, if he 

 were, we would lose all the valuable knowl- 

 edge which he strews along his way in pur- 

 suit of the Unknowable, desperately investi- 

 gating the Uninvestigable. Let the reader 

 duly appreciate the scientific consciousness, 

 which has so deeply inwrought itself into the 

 spirit of our own age. Nor should he fail to 

 note that the naturalist generally becomes as 



