Analogies Concerning Life 149 



the required energy, in both cases, being 

 extraneously supplied, and only transmuted 

 into the appropriate form by the guiding 

 principle which controls the operation. 



We do not know how to generate life 

 without the action of antecedent life at 

 present, though that may be a discovery 

 lying ready for us in the future ; but even 

 if we did, it would still be true (as I think) 

 that the life was in some sense pre-existent, 

 that it was not really created de novo, that it 

 was brought into actual practical every-day 

 existence doubtless, but that it had pre- 

 existed in some sense too : being called out, 

 as it were, from some great reservoir or 

 storehouse of vitality, to which, when its 

 earthly career is ended, it will return. 



Indeed, it cannot in any proper sense be 

 said ever to have left that storehouse, though 

 it has been made to interact with the world 

 for a time ; and, if we might so express it, it 

 may be thought of as carrying back with it, 

 into the general reservoir, any individuality, 

 and any experience and training or develop- 



