2 PLANT-LIFE 



for may not the chemist have merely provided a com- 

 bination of dead substances into which Life can enter, 

 and through which it may manifest itself ? Again, if it 

 be claimed that the living product is due to chemical 

 affinity, we naturally ask what this affinity is, and might 

 reasonably conclude that it is an activity of Life itself. 

 Perhaps it would be wiser to declare : In the beginning — 

 Life; that Life is infinite, uncreate, without beginning, 

 without end; that in Life nebulae, suns, planets, plants, 

 animals, and men " live, move, and have their being " ; 

 that this same Life, into whose Holiest Place we may 

 not enter, is at the back of all physical energy and 

 chemical affinity; that it manifests its activity not only 

 within the limits of what we call living matter, but also 

 in the combinations of the elements, the motions of the 

 heavenly bodies, and all the phenomena of the inorganic 

 world. One does not venture to dogmatize upon these 

 profound problems, but one likes to think that it is not 

 dead force, but living activity, that is engaged in forming 

 the tangible from the intangible, in framing solid solar 

 systems from meteoric particles or gaseous nebulae. 

 Chemical affinity, one might aver, never produced Life, 

 but, on the reverse, one might say that chemical affinity 

 is a phenomenon of Life. In the strict sense in which 

 the biologist regards Life, he declares that protoplasm 

 is its physical basis; but one is not always disposed to 

 accept biological limitations, nor to confine the notion 

 of Life to plants and animals alone. The imperialist 

 claims to think imperially, but the philosopher aims to 

 think universally, and so the latter chafes at the notion 

 of a particular substance being the sole basis of Life. 

 Thinking universally, he asks, May not matter in its 



