2IO Natural Salvation. 



that it would indicate that the primary and ultimate object 

 of all plant life is to bear seed ; of all animal life, to bring 

 forth offspring. 



Per contra, we believe that the object of all life, vege- 

 table and animal, is to live and feel the joys of living,; 

 and that seed and offspring are produced because, under 

 the hard conditions of the earthly habitat, we are unable 

 to live on continuously. That is to say, if the earth had 

 always been an easy habitat for life, there would have been 

 no seed, no offspring, no death. Offspring and seed result 

 originally from hardships and prospective death to the 

 parent cell, and are not the object of living, but rather an 

 evasion of death. 



It seems to me very desirable to have these premises 

 right at the outset as contrasted with the contrary view, 

 and to set off free from a radically wrong theory of life. 



To return now to our observation of the poppy stalk, 

 whatever of fate, of final tendency to go to seed, there is 

 in it, will be found due to heredity, established by long 

 conformity to climate and other conditions; a habit of 

 living which leads the different classes of cells to develop 

 and produce tissue at a certain time, relatively to each 

 other ; and in the manner in which these different tissue 

 growths of the stalk and flower limit and restrict each 

 other. 



It is now more than doubtful, and is discredited, whether 

 anything of the nature of a migratory germ, or " biophor," 



