a and some
general facts the number of which continually diminishes with the
progress of science.

There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does
not bear the marks of having passed through the others. Some time
since it was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can now
perceive, of metaphysical abstractions: and, further back in the
course of time, it took its form from theological conceptions. Our
most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two
earlier periods through which they passed.

The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration,
but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of
departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases
of the mind of men correspond to the epochs of the mind of the
race. How each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own
history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician
in his youth and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who
are up to their age can verify this for themselves.

According to the scientific classification, there are only three
kingdoms or states of life, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal.

The life of the vegetable kingdom has arisen out of the life of the
mineral kingdom and is sustained by it.

The distinguished scientist, Professor Lowell, says, "there is now no
more reason to doubt that plants grew out of chemical affinity than to
doubt that stones did," and nearly all outstanding zoologists would say
as much of animals.

Sir J. Burdon Sanderson, one of the most eminent among biologists,
insists that "in physiology the word life is understood to mean the
chemical and physical activities of the parts of which the organism
consists." The renowned Sir Ray Lankester strenuously holds that
"zoology is the science which seeks to arrange and discuss the phenomena
of animal life and form, as the outcome of the operation of the laws of
physics and chemistry," and goes so far as to say that he knows of no
leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of
biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and
impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his
"Riddle of the Universe."

There is no force that is not life, nor life which is not force; and
there is no life or force, about which we know anything, without