LIFE HISTOKT OP COAL. 189 



The chemist can tell us all the elements of wood, but he cannot 

 make a piece of wood, though he has the elements in abundance. 

 That is because life is needed to the making. In the same way, 

 knowing the constituents of Coal and having them in abundance, 

 still he cannot make a piece of Coal, Why ? I can only answer 

 as before : because life is needed to the making. "What is life ? 

 Is there no life but what we know as vegetable or animal ? Or 

 can we go back through these branches to a common stock 

 whence they sprang ; nay more, go, so to speak, helow vegetable 

 life to rock life, to elemental life ; and ahove animal life to higher 

 forms of life, with embodiment in planet or sun ; in solar system 

 or stellar universe, or in all creation ? The Christian, at least, 

 cannot say iVo, in the latter direction ; nor the Materialist per- 

 haps in the former. "Who will presume to limit the bounds of 

 life by human experience, by human appreciation ? SomehoWj 

 where I see growth, I expect life of some kind in the thing itself. 

 Where I see purpose, plan and aim, I expect life either in itself 

 or in the agent which employs it. These I seem to see in Coal. 



When may matter be said to live ? When it has a definite 

 duty assigned to it, a distinct purpose to fulfil, a particular part 

 to play. Coal has all this. 



Is life evidenced by orderly progressive movement, by the 

 definite pursuit of certain ends through a cycle of events variable 

 only within certain limits ? Coal does this exactly. 



Is life bounded on the one hand by Birth, on the other by 

 Death ? Coal is. 



Are the successive phases of life : infancy, youth, prime, old 

 age ? Coal goes through these. 



Must life start with a time of weakness, pass gradually into 

 full strength, and then declining again into weakness pass thence 

 into silence, out of which silence again to emerge, and in its 

 descendant retread the old path ? Coal does this. 



Is that alive whose work can be cut short, which, in other 

 words, can come to a premature end ? Coal can. 



It begins life within the womb of its parent the living vege- 

 table. Its parent dies at its birth. It too may die in its infancy. 

 It must be buried to live. Exposure kills it. The peat of 



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