THE BREATH OF LIFE 



natural as day and night, as the dews and the rain. 

 Our studies of the past history of the globe reveal 

 the fact that life appeared upon a cooling planet 

 when the temperature was suitable, and when it 3 

 basic elements, water and carbon dioxide, were at 

 hand. How it began, whether through insensible 

 changes in the activities of inert matter, lasting 

 whole geologic ages, or by a sudden transformation 

 at many points on the earth's surface, we can never 

 know. But science can see no reason for believing 

 that its beginning was other than natural; it was 

 inevitable from the constitution of matter itself. 

 Moreover, since the law of evolution seems of uni- 

 versal application, and affords the key to more great 

 problems than any other generalization of the hu- 

 man mind, one would say on a priori grounds that 

 life is an evolution, that its genesis is to be sought 

 in the inherent capacities and potentialities of mat- 

 ter itself. How else could it come? Science cannot 

 go outside of matter and its laws for an explana- 

 tion of any phenomena that appear in matter. It 

 goes inside of matter instead, and in its mysterious 

 molecular attractions and repulsions, in the whirl 

 and dance of the atoms and electrons, in their em- 

 anations and transformations, in their amazing 

 potencies and activities, sees, or seems to see, the 

 secret of the origin of life itself. But this view is 

 distasteful to a large number of thinking persons 

 Many would call it frank materialism, and declare 



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