matter with the energy it holds; while the slight, flitting, casual
thing seems to be living matter. The inorganic is from all eternity to
all eternity; it is distributed throughout all space and endures through
all time, while the organic is, in comparison, only of the here and the
now; it was not here yesterday, and it may not be here to-morrow; it
comes and goes. Life is like a bird of passage which alights and tarries
for a time and is gone, and the places where it perched and nested and
led forth its brood know it no more. Apparently it flits from world to
world as the great cosmic spring comes to each, and departs as the
cosmic winter returns to each. It is a visitor, a migrant, a frail,
timid thing, which waits upon the seasons and flees from the coming
tempests and vicissitudes.

How casual, uncertain, and inconsequential the vital order seems in our
own solar system--a mere incident or by-product in its cosmic evolution!
Astronomy sounds the depths of space, and sees only mechanical and
chemical forces at work there. It is almost certain that only a small
fraction of the planetary surfaces is the abode of life. On the earth
alone, of all the great family of planets and satellites, is the vital
order in full career. It may yet linger upon Mars, but it is evidently
waning. On the inferior planets it probably had its day long ago, while
it must be millions of years before it comes to the superior planets, if
it ever comes to them. What a vast, inconceivable outlay of time and
energy for such small returns! Evidently the vital order is only an
episode, a transient or secondary phase of matter in the process of
sidereal evolution. Astronomic space is strewn with dead worlds, as a
New England field is with drift boulders. That life has touched and
tarried here and there upon them can hardly be doubted, but if it is
anything more than a passing incident, an infant crying in the night, a
flush of color upon the cheek, a flower blooming by the wayside,
appearances are against it.

We read our astronomy and geology in the light of our enormous egotism,
and appropriate all to ourselves; but science sees in our appearance
here a no more significant event than in the foam and bubbles that whirl
and dance for a moment upon the river's current. The bubbles have their
reason for being; all the mysteries of molecular attraction and
repulsion may be involved in their production; without the solar energy,
and the revolution of