Science today is gazing upon a living universe.  She has not yet realized the full significance of what she has discovered, and her hands are raised as if to shade her eyes from the unaccustomed glare that is bursting upon her.  From the dark cavern of universal dead matter, she has stepped out into the glare of the noon-day sun of a Universe All-Alive even to its smallest and apparently most inert particle.

Beginning at Man, the highest form of Life known to us, we may pass rapidly down the scale of animal life, seeing life in full operation at each descending step.  Passing from the animal to the vegetable kingdom, we still see Life in full operation, although in lessened degrees of expression.  We shall not stop here to review the many manifestations of Life among the forms of plant-life, for we shall have occasion to mention them in our next lesson, but it must be apparent to all that Life is constantly manifesting in the sprouting of seeds; the putting forth of stalk, leaves, blossoms, fruit, etc., and in the enormous manifestation of force and energy in such growth and development.  One may see the life force in the plant pressing forth for expression and manifestation, from the first sprouting of the seed, until the last vital action on the part of the mature plant or tree.

Besides the vital action observable in the growth and development of plants, we know, of course, that plants sicken and die, and manifest all other attributes of living forms.  There is no room for argument about the presence of life in the plant kingdom.

But there are other forms of life far below the scale of the plants.  There is the world of the bacteria, microbes, infusoria—­the groups of cells with a common life—­the single cell creatures, down to the Monera, the creatures lower than the single cells—­the Things of the slime of the ocean bed.

These tiny Things—­living Things—­present to the sight merely a tiny speck of jelly, without organs of any kind.  And yet they exercise all the functions of life—­movement, nutrition, reproduction, sensation, and dissolution.  Some of these elementary forms are all stomach, that is they are all one organ capable of performing all the functions necessary for the life of the animal.  The creature has no mouth, but when it wishes to devour an object it simply envelopes it—­wraps itself around it like a bit of glue around a gnat, and then absorbs the substance of its prey through its whole body.

Scientists have turned some of these tiny creatures inside out, and yet they have gone on with their life functions undisturbed and untroubled.  They have cut them up into still tinier bits, and yet each bit lived on as a separate animal, performing all of its functions undisturbed.  They are all the same all over, and all the way through.  They reproduce themselves by growing to a certain size, and then separating into two, and so on.  The rapidity of the increase is most remarkable.