LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



LIFE RflD ITS CONDITIONS. 



ALL natural objects, roughly divided, arrange themselves 

 into three groups, constituting the so-called Mineral, 

 Vegetable and Animal kingdoms. Mineral bodies are all 

 devoid of life. They consist of either a single element, or, if 

 combined, occur in nature in the form of simple compounds, 

 composed of more than two or three elements. They are 

 homogeneous in texture, or, when unmixed, formed of 

 similar particles which have no definite relations to one 

 another. In form they are either altogether indefinite, when 

 they are said to be amorphous, or have a definite shape, 

 called crystalline, in which case they are ordinarily bounded 

 by plane surfaces and straight lines. When mineral bodies 

 increase in size, as crystals may do, the increase is produced 

 simply by accretion. They exhibit purely physical and 

 chemical phenomena, and show no tendency to periodic 

 changes of any kind. Fossils or petrifactions, which owe 

 their existence and characters to beings which lived in 

 former periods of the earth's history, cannot, though made 

 up of mineral matter, be properly said to belong to the 

 mineral kingdom. 



But objects belonging to the vegetable and animal king- 

 doms differ markedly from inert, lifeless, mineral matter. 

 Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are the most 

 important of the few chemical elements which enter into 



