TIME AND CHANGE 
and through mechanical principles and forces, and 
yet it is evidently more than mechanics. It is mani- 
fested through matter, and yet no analysis of matter 
can reveal its secret. It comes and goes while mat- 
ter stays; we destroy life, but cannot destroy mat- 
ter. It is as fugitive as the wind which fills all sails 
one minute and is gone the next. It avails itself of 
fluids and gases and the laws which govern them, 
but fluids and gases do not explain it. It waits 
upon the rains and the dews, but it is more than 
they are; it follows in the footsteps of the decay and 
disintegration of the inorganic, and yet it is not the 
gift of these things; it transforms the face of the 
earth, and yet the earth has been and will be when 
it was not and when it will not be. Through his 
knowledge and his science man performs wonders 
every day; he can reduce mountains to powder and 
seas to dry land, but he cannot create or start de novo 
the least throb of life. At least, he has not yet done 
so. With all his vast resources of mechanics and 
chemistry, and his insight into the mechanism of 
the universe, he has not yet made the least particle 
of inorganic matter thrill with the mysterious some- 
thing we call life. 
There must have been a time when life was not 
upon the earth and there must again come a time 
when it will not be. It has probably vanished from 
the moon and all inferior planets, and it has not 
yet come to the superior planets, except maybe to 
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