LIFE: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 25 
totally unexplained phenomenon of conscious¬ 
ness—all inspire us with wonder and awe, and 
make us realize the countless thousands of gen¬ 
erations which must have existed in order to 
render possible such a perfected piece of mech¬ 
anism, by the processes of gradual evolution. 
THE MANIFESTATIONS OF LIFE 
One of the most characteristic functions of 
life is its incessant tendency to express itself 
and to reproduce itself. Anyone who has sat 
on a grassy bank in the early spring, and has 
watched the young blades of grass shoot up 
from the soil, cannot but have been struck 
by the constant urge on the part of life thus to 
express itself, whenever the conditions of life 
were such as to render its manifestation pos¬ 
sible. From apparently barren soil, from be¬ 
tween clefts in a rock, plant life emerges. 
Thousands of insects and tiny animals are 
found everywhere, and over the whole surface 
of the earth swarm millions of invisible bac¬ 
teria. Why should there be this persistent 
effort oh the part of nature? To what end? 
This is a question which we will discuss in the 
chapter dealing with life’s meaning and destiny. 
For the present, I wish merely to emphasize the 
constant activity and the constant desire for 
growth and reproduction by life of every 
variety. 
Life is active; it is dynamic. It is not a 
static thing; it moves. And this movement is 
one of the characteristics of life. We are ac¬ 
customed to think of “dead” matter as that 
which does not move of itself, but is only 
