Prof.  Bose’s great book is full of the most startling results of experiments.  He proves that the metals manifest something like sleep; can be killed; exhibit torpor and sluggishness; get tired or lazy; wake up; can be roused into activity; may be stimulated, strengthened, weakened; suffer 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 this stage of evolution is, and always has been, in operation, and that new forms of life are constantly evolving from the inorganic forms.  “Creation,” so-called (although the word is an absurdity from the Yogi point of view), is constantly being performed.