the earth upon its axis, they would not appear;
and yet they are only bubbles upon the river's current, as we are
bubbles upon the stream of energy that flows through the universe.
Apparently the cosmic game is played for us no more than for the
parasites that infest our bodies, or for the frost ferns that form upon
our window-panes in winter. The making of suns and systems goes on in
the depths of space, and doubtless will go on to all eternity, without
any more reference to the vital order than to the chemical compounds.

The amount of living matter in the universe, so far as we can penetrate
it, compared with the non-living, is, in amount, like a flurry of snow
that whitens the fields and hills of a spring morning compared to the
miles of rock and soil beneath it; and with reference to geologic time
it is about as fleeting. In the vast welter of suns and systems in the
heavens above us, we see only dead matter, and most of it is in a
condition of glowing metallic vapor. There are doubtless living
organisms upon some of the invisible planetary bodies, but they are
probably as fugitive and temporary as upon our own world. Much of the
surface of the earth is clothed in a light vestment of life, which, back
in geologic time, seems to have more completely enveloped it than at
present, as both the arctic and the antarctic regions bear evidence in
their coal-beds and other fossil remains of luxuriant vegetable growths.

Strip the earth of its thin pellicle of soil, thinner with reference to
the mass than is the peel to the apple, and you have stripped it of its
life. Or, rob it of its watery vapor and the carbon dioxide in the air,
both stages in its evolution, and you have a dead world. The huge globe
swings through space only as a mass of insensate rock. So limited and
evanescent is the world of living matter, so vast and enduring is the
world of the non-living. Looked at in this way, in the light of physical
science, life, I repeat, seems like a mere passing phase of the cosmic
evolution, a flitting and temporary stage of matter which it passes
through in the procession of changes on the surface of a cooling planet.
Between the fiery mist of the nebula, and the frigid and consolidated
globe, there is a brief span, ranging over about one hundred and twenty
degrees of temperature, where life appears and organic evolution takes
place. Compared with the whole scale of temperature, from absolute zero
to the white heat of the