e, _i.e._, the
fundamental existence, of "life" or of "mind," it ought to reply that
it does not know; if asked about "personality," or "souls," or
"God,"--about all of which Professor Haeckel has fully-fledged
opinions--it would have to ask for a definition of the terms, and would
speak either not at all or with bated breath concerning them.

The possibility that "life" may be a real and basal form of existence,
and therefore persistent, is a possibility to be borne in mind. It may
at least serve as a clue to investigation, and some day may bear fruit;
at present it is no better than a working hypothesis. It is one that on
the whole commends itself to me; for I conceive that though we only
know of it as a function of terrestrial matter, yet that it has another
aspect too, and I say this because I see it arriving and
leaving--animating matter for a time and then quitting it, just as I
see dew appearing and disappearing on a plate. Apart from a solid
surface, dew cannot exist as such; and to a savage it might seem to
spring into and to go out of existence--to be an exudation from the
solid, and dependent wholly upon it; but we happen to know more about
it: we know that it has a permanent and continuous existence in an
imperceptible, intangible, supersensual form, though its visible
manifestation in the form of mist or dew is temporary and evanescent.
Perhaps it is permissible to trace in that elementary phenomenon some
superficial analogy to an incarnation.

The fact concerning life which lies at the root of Professor Haeckel's
doctrine about its origin, is that living beings have undoubtedly made
their appearance on this planet, where at one time they cannot be
suspected of having existed. Consequently that whatever life may be, it
is something which can begin to interact with the atoms of terrestrial
matter, at some period, or state of aggregation, or other condition of
elaboration,--a condition which may perhaps be rather definite, if only
we were aware of what it was. But that undoubted fact is quite
consistent with any view as to the nature of "life," and even with any
view as to the mode of its terrestrial commencement; there is nothing
in that to say that it is a function of matter alone, any more than the
wind is a function of the leaves which dance under its influence; there
is nothing even to contradict the notion that it sprang into existence
suddenly at a literal word of command. The improbability or absurdi