28 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



child grows gradually into consciousness, just as the 

 race has grown gradually into consciousness. Dare 

 we affirm that in either case the leap from the un- 

 conscious to the conscious was or is suddenly made ? 

 No more dare we affirm that the leap from the in- 

 organic to the organic was suddenly made. Is the 

 crystal absolutely dead ? See it shape itself ac- 

 cording to a special plan ; see how sensitive it is to 

 the surrounding medium; see it grow when the 

 proper food is given it, so to speak. Pasteur has 

 noted that it cicatrizes or repairs itself when 

 wounded. When placed in the fluid of crystalliza- 

 tion, the injured part sears over and gradually re- 

 gains its original shape. The most advanced science 

 of our time does not regard life as a special and 

 separate principle, a real entity which has been added 

 to matter, but as a mode in which certain physical 

 forces manifest themselves, just as heat is not a 

 thing of itself, but a mode of motion. 



"Mechanical, chemical, and physical forces are 

 the only efficient agents in the living organism," 

 at least the only ones which science can recognize, 

 and these forces are the same in both the organic 

 and the inorganic worlds. 



Behold a fire, a conflagration ; see it leap and 

 climb ; witness its fierce activity, its all-devouring 

 energies ! How like a thing of life it is ! Is 

 there a unique and original principle at work here, 

 the principle or spirit of fire, a thing apart from the 

 intense chemical activity which it occasions ? The 

 ancient observers believed so, and it is a pretty 



