CLASSIFICATION OF LIVING TYPES 53 



analogies between the mechanism in radio-active 

 bodies and those of a more complex though less stable 

 kind in other substances not radio-active, but never- 

 theless radiant, like phosphorescent and other bodies 

 in a luminous state, we can perceive the presence of a 

 somewhat similar unstable state of motion. It is, 

 however, far more unsteady, but the phenomenon is of 

 the same character and consists essentially of a series 

 of metabolisms of an elementary kind, the radiation 

 being merely the visible manifestation of the break- 

 ing down of these unstable molecular groups. 



These aggregates do not persist for any length of 

 time, but if we could imagine them to have sufficient 

 stability and their number to be sufficiently great, the 

 body which they compose would likewise be active 

 like radium for an equally great length of time. 



The sun itself thus comes under this apparently 

 weird conception of primordial life, and the remotest 

 stars like it, in their silent evolutions, in their 

 turn develop out the first signs of that life which 

 in the course of ages render them also the seat of 

 many vital states, of many complex phenomena of 

 life and death, the scenes of conflict and of quietude, 

 of struggles, of survivals and defeats such as this 

 earth of ours has passed through and has yet to pass. 



This blending of the organic and the inorganic, of 

 the world of animate and of inanimate things, has long 

 since seemed to me to be the goal to which science 

 may steadily be moving. But it must not be imagined 

 that that goal has been reached until there is the 

 strongest evidence that it has been reached : and the 



