156 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



an instance in the inorganic world of the extinction 

 of the unfit. The corpuscles, the ultimate 

 particles of matter, have tried the combination 

 radium ; the combination proves unstable, and the 

 atom changes form till a form helium appears, 

 which is fitted to survive. Other atoms are found 

 to be in the same state of unstable experimental 

 evolution ; and one, thorium^ is found to pass 

 through half-a-dozen forms before it reaches a 

 form fitted to survive. No doubt there are as 

 many extinct atoms as extinct animals ; and the 

 eighty or so elements now existent have been 

 produced by the ordinary evolutionary law of the 

 survival of the fittest. Nay, more ; Professor J. J. 

 Thomson has lately shown that it is possible to 

 modify the evolution of an unstable atom by 

 varying its environment, so that the atom, like 

 the animal, is a product of heredity, variation, 

 and environment, and can, like domestic animals, 

 be artificially bred. 



We cannot, therefore, find any division between 

 the functions of the so-called living and the so- 

 called dead. 



As long ago as 1849 Mulder, in his Chemistry 

 of Vegetable and Animal Physiology^ declared : " If 

 anyone fancies that it is more easy to conceive 

 of the production of a crystal than of a texture 

 composed of fibres, globules, and cells, that is, of 



