oke something antithetical to matter, to account for the
appearance of life on the planet.

It may be justly urged that the effect upon our habits of thought of the
long ages during which this process has been going on, leading us to
differentiate matter and spirit and look upon them as two opposite
entities, hindering or contending with each other,--one heavenly, the
other earthly, one everlasting, the other perishable, one the supreme
good, the other the seat and parent of all that is evil,--the cumulative
effect of this habit of thought in the race-mind is, I say, not easily
changed or overcome. We still think, and probably many of us always will
think, of spirit as something alien to matter, something mystical,
transcendental, and not of this world. We look upon matter as gross,
obstructive, and the enemy of the spirit. We do not know how we are
going to get along without it, but we solace ourselves with the thought
that by and by, in some other, non-material world, we shall get along
without it, and experience a great expansion of life by reason of our
emancipation from it. Our practical life upon this planet is more or
less a struggle with gross matter; our senses apprehend it coarsely; of
its true inwardness they tell us nothing; of the perpetual change and
transformation of energy going on in bodies about us they tell us
nothing; of the wonders and potencies of matter as revealed in
radio-activity, in the X-ray, in chemical affinity and polarity, they
tell us nothing; of the all-pervasive ether, without which we could not
see or live at all, they tell us nothing. In fact we live and move and
have our being in a complex of forces and tendencies of which, even by
the aid of science, we but see as through a glass darkly. Of the
effluence of things, the emanations from the minds and bodies of our
friends, and from other living forms about us, from the heavens above
and from the earth below, our daily lives tell us nothing, any more than
our eyes tell us of the invisible rays in the sun's spectrum, or than
our ears tell us of the murmurs of the life-currents in growing things.
Science alone unveils the hidden wonders and sleepless activities of the
world forces that play through us and about us. It alone brings the
heavens near, and reveals the brotherhood or sisterhood of worlds. It
alone makes man at home in the universe, and shows us how many friendly
powers wait upon him day and night. It alone shows him the glori