THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 



of Egypt, building up miniature pyramids, terrace 

 upon terrace, from base to apex, forming a series 

 of steps like those up which the traveler in Egypt 

 is dragged by his guides ! We can fancy, if we like, 

 these infinitesimal structures built by an invisible 

 population which swarms among the constituent 

 molecules, controlled and coerced by some invisi- 

 ble matter, says Tyndall. This might be called 

 literature, or poetry, or religion, but it would not 

 be science; science says that these salt pyramids are 

 the result of the play of attraction and repulsion 

 among the salt molecules themselves; that they are 

 self -poised and self-quarried; it goes further than 

 that and says that the quality we call saltness is the 

 result of a certain definite arrangement of their ul- 

 timate atoms of matter; that the qualities of things 

 as they affect our senses — hardness, softness, sweet- 

 ness, bitterness — are the result of molecular motion 

 and combination among the ultimate atoms. All 

 these things seem on the threshold of life, waiting 

 in the antechamber, as it were; to-morrow they will 

 be life, or, as Tyndall says, "Incipient life, as it 

 were, manifests itself throughout the whole of what 

 is called inorganic nature." 



VIII 



The question of the nature and origin of life is a 

 kind of perpetual motion question in biology. Life 

 without antecedent life, so far as human experi- 



277 



