588 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
of, and which, from a wrong conception as to matter, has lain, so to speak, under 
our very feet for all the ages? The universe is not a thing, a machine, made for 
us to look at and wonder how we would have gone to work to make it, but we 
are part of it, as actually as though we were a planet or arock. We are but an 
expression of matter, as the rock or the tree; our bones and tissues are but expres- 
sions of matter, yet they have assumed form and substance, so far as our methods 
of inquiry go, from the same source that comes the faculty that describes them. 
But they are not necessary for life, as life exists without them, but they are 
necessary to the uses of the life that employs them. And here again we come 
to the inquiry which humanity has always been making. 
And here, once for all, it may as well be said, that the ‘‘ origin” of life is a 
misnomer, an assumption. The true philosophic inquiry is, how and when did 
life, as we know it or as we understand it, manifest itself upon our earth, and 
how? For the origin of life is with the infinite, and we cannot even form a 
conception of its beginning; it may never have had an origin. It may be the 
eternal principle itself, without beginning or ending, and knowable only by itself. 
It is egotism for humanity to assume itself the one perfect manifestation of life. 
We may be as low in the scale compared with other forms as are the merest rudi_ 
mentary organisms of our own planet. Let not then this egotism overtask our 
powers of conception. It is enough, and to us godlike, to study its manifesta- 
tions and to trace its processes as far only as the ultimate forms of matter and its 
phenomena may enable us to understand this principle, which to the universe of 
soul and sense is as that of gravity to the universe of material worlds. 
We are now engaged in a new line of inquiry. When science began the 
study of the problem of life, it commenced a‘ the foundation of things, the forma- 
tion of the solar system, and thence to our house, the planet which we inhabit. 
The theory of the rocks grew from the nebular hypothesis, and the examination 
of therocks supported the theory. The fossils in the rocks told the story of a 
once differing form of life to ours, of many epochs of differing forms, and so grew 
demonstration out of theory. That book of the rocks has been variously read, 
the last reading being by the light of comparative anatomy, until the hypothesis of 
spontaneous generation and evolution became the solution of science. But it has not 
so far, stood all tests. | Thus we read up from the past, and we have the advan- 
tage of the wondrous store of knowledge obtained. If not conclusive, the mind 
of man is immensely the richer in its possessions for it. 
The present method, however, is entirely different. It is from small things— 
going up from particles to aggregates and systems. We take now, instead of a 
stratum of rock, a molecule, and we learn its lesson. And this lesson is that all 
life is in its phenomena and appearance the same—whether of plant or animal. 
There is no difference in the appearance or action of the molecules of an oak and 
ofaman. Andso far as we can determine this little mass actually performs the work 
of growth as perfectly, and seemingly as intelligently, as does the bee its material 
work. So far as we can see it works consciously and with intelligent plan, pur- 
