throats, or
occupying one another's bodies, thrilled and vibrating at an
inconceivable rate.

The theological solution of this problem of life fails more and more to
satisfy thinking men of to-day. Living things are natural phenomena, and
we feel that they must in some way be an outcome of the natural order.
Science is more and more familiarizing our minds with the idea that the
universe is a universe, a oneness; that its laws are continuous. We
follow the chemistry of it to the farthest stars and there is no serious
break or exception; it is all of one stuff. We follow the mechanics of
it into the same abysmal depths, and there are no breaks or exceptions.
The biology of it we cannot follow beyond our own little corner of the
universe; indeed, we have no proof that there is any biology anywhere
else. But if there is, it must be similar to our own. There is only one
kind of electricity (though two phases of it), only one kind of light
and heat, one kind of chemical affinity, in the universe; and hence only
one kind of life. Looked at in its relation to the whole, life appears
like a transient phenomenon of matter. I will not say accidental; it
seems inseparably bound up with the cosmic processes, but, I may say,
fugitive, superficial, circumscribed. Life comes and goes; it penetrates
but a little way into the earth; it is confined to a certain range of
temperature. Beyond a certain degree of cold, on the one hand, it does
not appear; and beyond a certain degree of heat, on the other, it is cut
off. Without water or moisture, it ceases; and without air, it is not.
It has evidently disappeared from the moon, and probably from the
inferior planets, and it is doubtful if it has yet appeared on any of
the superior planets, save Mars.

Life comes to matter as the flowers come in the spring,--when the time
is ripe for it,--and it disappears when the time is over-ripe. Man
appears in due course and has his little day upon the earth, but that
day must as surely come to an end. Yet can we conceive of the end of the
physical order? the end of gravity? or of cohesion? The air may
disappear, the water may disappear, combustion may cease; but oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon will continue somewhere.

V

Science is the redeemer of the physical world. It opens our eyes to its
true inwardness, and purges it of the coarse and brutal qualities with
which, in our practical lives, it is associated. It has its inner world
of ac