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CHAPTER VI. 

 ^ 



IS LIFE UNIVERSAL? 



" MAN capable of explaining his own existence ! " I 

 seem to hear the reader exclaim, as he peruses the 

 eloquent passage borrowed from Dr. Draper, in our 

 last chapter ; " it is a vain dream; we shall never be 

 able to say what life is." Perhaps not; yet we 

 should not be too hasty in deciding on this negative. 

 Nothing can seem more improbable, as that question 

 has been put, than that it should ever receive a satis- 

 factory reply ; but may there not have been an error 

 in the way of putting it? Problems that are truly 

 simple sometimes come before us in a very difficult 

 form, owing to pre-conceptions in our minds, and 

 demand for their solution not great ingenuity or 

 power, but that we should disembarrass ourselves 



