LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 
LIFE AND ITS CONDITIONS. 
LL natural objects, roughly divided, arrange themselves 
into three groups, constituting the so-called Mineral, 
Vegetable and Animal kingdoms. Mineral bodies are all 
devoid of life. They consist of either a single element, or, if 
combined, occur in nature in the form of simple compounds, 
composed of more than two or three elements. They are 
homogeneous in texture, or, when unmixed, formed of 
similar particles which have no definite relations to one 
another. In form they are either altogether indefinite, when 
they are said to be amorphous, or have a definite shape, 
called crystalline, in which case they are ordinarily bounded 
by plane surfaces and straight lines. When mineral bodies 
increase in size, as crystals may do, the increase is produced 
simply by accretion. They exhibit purely physical and 
chemical phenomena, and show no tendency to periodic 
changes of any kind. Fossils or petrifactions, which owe 
their existence and characters to beings which lived in 
former periods of the earth’s history, cannot, though made 
up of mineral matter, be properly said to belong to the 
mineral kingdom. 
But objects belonging to the vegetable and animal king- 
doms differ markedly from inert, lifeless, mineral matter. 
Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are the most 
important of the few chemical elements which enter into 
