from extreme cold and heat; may be drugged or
intoxicated, the different metals manifesting a different response to
certain drugs, just as different men and animals manifest a varying
degree of similar resistance. The response of a piece of steel
subjected to the influence of a chemical poison shows a gradual
fluttering and weakening until it finally dies away, just as animal
matter does when similarly poisoned. When revived in time by an
antidote, the recovery was similarly gradual in both metal and muscle.
A remarkable fact is noted by the scientist when he tells us that the
very poisons that kill the metals are themselves alive and may be
killed, drugged, stimulated, etc., showing the same response as in the
case of the metals, proving the existence in them of the same life that
is in the metals and animal matter that they influence.

Of course when these metals are "killed" there is merely a killing of
the metal as metal--the atoms and principles of which the metal is
composed remaining fully alive and active, just as is the case with the
atom of the human body after the soul passes out--the body is as much
alive after death as during the life of the person, the activity of the
parts being along the lines of dissolution instead of construction in
that case.

We hear much of the claims of scientists who announce that they are on
the eve of "_creating_ life" from non-living matter. This is all
nonsense--life can come only from life. Life from non-life is an
absurdity. And all Life comes from the One Life underlying All. But it
is true that Science has done, is doing, and will do, something very
much like "creating life," but of course this is merely changing the
form of Life into other forms--the lesser form into the higher--just as
one produces a plant from a seed, or a fruit from a plant. The Life is
always there, and responds to the proper stimulus and conditions.

A number of scientists are working on the problem of generating living
forms from inorganic matter. The old idea of "spontaneous generation,"
for many years relegated to the scrap-pile of Science, is again coming
to the front. Although the theory of Evolution compels its adherents to
accept the idea that at one time in the past living forms sprung from
the non-living (so-called), yet it has been generally believed that the
conditions which brought about this stage of evolution has forever
passed. But the indications now all point to the other view that