Philosophical Conceptions of Life. 251 
I willingly admit that, in view of our present scientific 
notions of the cosmogony, it is impossible to believe that life 
always existed upon this planet. I willingly admit that life 
on the earth must have had a beginning in time. But we do 
not know how it began. Let us honestly confess our igno- 
rance. I declare to you I think the old Hebrew belief, that 
life began by a creative act of the Universal Mind, has quite 
as good claims to be regarded as a scientific hypothesis as the 
speculation that inorganic matter ever became living by 
virtue of its own forces merely. 
If we turn now to the consideration of the processes of 
growth, we shall find additional reasons for believing in the 
existence of a vital principle. Let us consider first, in the 
most general way, the conditions under which those strictly 
chemical processes occur, to which I have already alluded, 
and by which the inorganic atoms are combined into organic 
matter. I repeat it, I do not for a moment question that the 
actual force by which these processes are compelled exists in 
the solar rays, and that it is, after all, the solar energy thus 
stored up in the vegetable protoplasm and its products that 
supplies, by its subsequent liberation, all the force manifested 
by living beings. Yet, let me beg you to observe that in all 
the myriads of years during which the solar energy has 
streamed upon the earth, that energy has never, on any occa- 
sion that we know of, determined the combination of inorganic 
atoms into organic matter, except within the substance of 
already living protoplasm. The water and carbon dioxide 
and ammonia in the atmosphere and in the soil come into 
contact with each other, within thesubstance of porous inorganic 
clods on the surface of the soil, much as they do in the sub- 
stance of protoplasm, and the equal sun warms both alike ; 
but in the clod they remain water, carbon dioxide, and ammo- 
nia; in the protoplasm, provided only that it is living proto- 
plasm, they combine into starch or oil, or even into protoplasm 
itself. The essential condition, then, of this storing up of 
the solar energy for the subsequent use of living beings is 
the presence of life, and in these fundamental operations 
the mighty force of the sun acts, in the fullest sense of the 
words, the part of the servant of lite. 
The view thus suggested, that we have here to do with 
something more than the mere operation of the inorganic 
forces, is still further strengthened when we come to consider 
more in detail the phenomena of the growth of living beings, 
whether plants or animals. The better we become acquainted 
with these phenomena the more fully we become convinced 
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