Crystals, like living forms, may be sterilized and rendered incapable of reproduction by chemical process, or electrical discharges.  They may also be “killed” and future growth prevented in this manner.  Surely this looks like “Life,” does it not?

To realize the importance of this idea of life among the crystals, we must remember that our hardest rocks and metals are composed of crystals, and that the dirt and earth upon which we grow and live are but crumbled rock and miniature crystals.  Therefore the very dust under our feet is alive. There is nothing dead. There is no transformation of “dead matter” into live plant matter, and then into live animal matter.  The chemicals are alive, and from chemical to man’s body there is but a continuous change of shape and form of living matter.  Any man’s body, decomposing, is again resolved into chemicals, and the chain begins over again.  Merely changes in living forms—­that’s all, so far as the bodies are concerned.

Nature furnishes us with many examples of this presence of life in the inorganic world.  We have but to look around to see the truth of the statement that All is Alive.  There is that which is known as the “fatigue of elasticity” in metals.  Razors get tired, and require a rest.  Tuning forks lose their powers of vibration, to a degree, and have to be given a vacation.  ’Machinery in mills and manufactories needs an occasional day off.  Metals are subject to disease and infection, and have been poisoned and restored by antidotes.  Window glass, especially stained glass, is subject to a disease spreading from pane to pane.

Men accustomed to handling and using tools and machinery naturally drop into the habit of speaking of these things as if they were alive.  They seem to recognize the presence of “feeling” in tools or machine, and to perceive in each a sort of “character” or personality, which must be respected, humored, or coaxed in order to get the best results.

Perhaps the most valuable testimony along these lines, and which goes very far toward proving the centuries-old theories of the Yogis regarding Omnipresent Life, comes from Prof.  J. Chunder Bose, of the Calcutta University, a Hindu educated in the English Universities, under the best teachers, and who is now a leading scientific authority in the western world, tie has given to the world some very valuable scientific information along these lines in his book entitled “Response in the Living and Non-living,” which has caused the widest comment and created the greatest interest among the highest scientific authorities.  His experiments along the lines of the gathering of evidence of life in the inorganic forms have revolutionized the theories of modern science, and have done much to further the idea that life is present everywhere, and that there is no such thing as dead matter.

He bases his work upon the theory that the best and only true test for the presence of life in matter is the response of matter to external stimulus.  Proceeding from this fundamental theory he has proven by in-numerable experiments that so-called inorganic matter, minerals, metals, etc., give a response to such stimulus, which response is similar, if not identical, to the response of the matter composing the bodies of plants, animals, men.