THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 



pears when the time is over-ripe. Man appears in 

 due course and has his little day upon the earth, 

 but that day must as surely come to an end. Yet 

 can we conceive of the end of the physical order? 

 the end of gravity? or of cohesion? The air may dis- 

 appear, the water may disappear, combustion may 

 cease; but oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon 

 will continue somewhere. 



Science is the redeemer of the physical world. It 

 opens our eyes to its true inwardness, and purges it 

 of the coarse and brutal qualities with which, in our 

 practical lives, it is associated. It has its inner 

 world of activities and possibilities of which our 

 senses give us no hint. This inner world of molecules 

 and atoms and electrons, thrilled and vibrating with 

 energy, the infinitely little, the almost infinitely 

 rapid, in the bosom of the infinitely vast and dis- 

 tant and automatic — what a revelation it all is ! 

 what a glimpse into "Nature's infinite book of 

 secrecy"! 



Our senses reveal to us but one kind of motion — 

 mass motion — the change of place of visible bodies. 

 But there is another motion in all matter which our 

 senses do not reveal to us as motion — molecular 

 vibration, or the thrill of the atoms. At the heart 

 of the most massive rock this whirl of the atoms or 

 corpuscles is going on. If our ears were fine enough 



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