THE DIVINE SOIL 



we think of a stick with only one end ? We have 

 to if we compass time in thought, or space, either. 



V 



Given atomic motion, chemical affinity — this 

 hunger or love of the elements for one another — 

 crystallization, electricity, radium, the raining upon 

 us of solar and sidereal influences, the youth of the 

 earth, and the whole universe vibrating with the cos- 

 mic creative energy, the beginning of life, the step 

 from the inorganic to the organic, is not so hard to 

 conceive. In a dead universe this would be hard, 

 but we have a universe throbbing with cosmic life 

 and passion to begin with. It is impossible for me 

 to think of anything as uncaused, and in trying to 

 figure to myself this beginning of life I have to 

 postulate this universal creative energy that pervades 

 the worlds as animating the atoms and causing 

 them to combine so as to produce the primordial 

 protoplasm. Then when the first cell divides and 

 becomes two, I have to think of an inherent some- 

 thing that prompts the act, and so on all the way up. 



I cannot conceive of crystallization, this precise 

 and invariable arrangement of certain elements, 

 nor of the invariable chemical compounds, without 

 postulating some inner force, or will, or tendency 

 that determines them. I cannot conceive of an 

 atom of carbon, or oxygen, or hydrogen as doing 

 anything of itself. It must be alive, and this life 

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