THE WORLD OF LIFE 



CHAPTER I 



WHAT LIFE IS, AjI^D WHENCE IT COMES 



When primeval man first rose above the brutes from which 

 he was developed ; when, by means of his superior intellect, 

 he had acquired speech and the use of fire ; and more espe- 

 cially when his reasoning and reflecting faculties caused him 

 to ask those questions which every child now asks about the 

 world around it — what is this ? and why is that ? — he would, 

 for the first time, perceive and wonder at the great contrast 

 between the living and the not-living things around him. 



He would first observe that the animals which he caught 

 and killed for food, though so unlike himself outwardly, were 

 yet very like his fellow-men in their internal structure. He 

 would see that their bony framework was almost identical in 

 shape and in substance with his own; that they possessed flesh 

 and blood, that they had eyes, nose, and ears; that presumably 

 they had senses like his own, sensations like his own ; that they 

 lived by food and drink as he did, and yet were in many ways 

 so different. Above all, he would soon notice how inferior 

 they were to himself in intellect, inasmuch as they never made 

 fires, never used any kind of tools or weapons ; and that, 

 although many of them were much stronger than he was, yet 

 his superiority in these things, and in making traps or pitfalls 

 to capture them, showed that he was really their superior and 

 their master. 



Gradually, probably very slowly, he would extend these 

 observations to all the lower forms of life, even wdjen both 



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