Life and Its Conditions. 15 
plant will, in most cases, kill it outright, and will always 
bring about a suspension of all visible life-phenomena. 
While the large majority of living beings are organized, 
or composed of different parts, called organs, which sustain 
certain relations with one another, and which discharge 
different offices, yet it must not therefore be concluded that 
organization is a necessary accompaniment of vitality, or 
that all living creatures are organized. Innumerous low 
forms of life, so low that they occupy the very lowest place 
in the scale of animated existences, absolutely exhibit no 
visible structure, and cannot, therefore, be said to be organ- 
ized, but they, nevertheless, discharge all their vital functions 
just as well as though they possessed special organs for the 
purpose. Concluding our theme, we are forced to admit 
that animals are organized, or possess structure, because 
they are alive, and not that they live because they are organ- 
ized. By carefully comparing the morphological and physi- 
ological differences between different animals and plants, 
naturalists have divided the entire animal and vegetable 
kingdoms into a number of divisions, whose Jeading char- 
acteristics may be found in almost every text-book. All 
that we promised ourselves when this work was first thought 
of was a brief treatment of a few of the most interesting 
life-forms of this planet of ours in the light of their ways 
and doings, and the direction of human thought to those 
traits of character and manifestations of conscious intelli- 
gence which fit them to become partakers with man of that 
new life which awaits him beyond the grave. 
