56 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
carbon and nitrogen, because from these four elements many 
of the primary organic as well as inorganic compounds were 
formed, though these four elements, as well as the other sixty 
odd elements, which followed in the order of requirement, 
would seem to be but variations of the one primary elementary 
matter. But with matter came motion, and when the motion 
became sufficiently great to generate the necessary degree of 
heat (heat being atomic motion or the result of atomic motion ) 
the whole material creation would become a molten mass, 
which would emit or throw off various gaseous compounds. 
During these mighty operations in which the whole material 
universe was brought together, the intensest degree of heat 
and the highest degree of pressure would be generated and 
exercised; and the primary amorphous matter would assume 
the stable and definite elementary forms in which we now find it. 
We have now briefly gone over the origin of the material 
universe ; Jet us now endeavor to show how life originated on 
that part of it known as the earth. Matter is void of conscious- 
ness and intelligence. Its properties of inertia and gravitation 
do not indicate life; neither do its properties to attract or repel 
and to combine to form inorganic and organic compounds. 
They simply denote that matter acts in accordance with 
certain laws given to it by the spiritual creator. The light 
and heat of the sun acting on humid earth cannot originate 
life. They are but means for the developement of matter that 
has been vitalized. The vitalizer is God, and it is He who 
guides matter from the dead inorganic to the living organic. 
Nor can the chemico-physicist originate life in his laboratory. 
He has been able to imitate nature in the formation, synthet- 
ically, of many inorganic and organic compounds ; and he 
may even make artificial protoplasm, but he has not up to the 
present time been able to endow it with life. Whether the 
first living organism was animal or vegetable we do not 
positively know. The Zooid or the Zoophyte, a variety of 
compound animal and plant, may have been the beginning of 
living things, but this is only conjecture. Assuming that the 
Zooid or the jelly-fish were the starting point of living things, 
