It is certain that in the human scale of values the spirituality of man far transcends anything in the animal or physical world, but that even that came by the road of evolution, is, indeed, the flowering of ruder and cruder powers and attributes of the life below us, I cannot for a moment doubt.  Call it a transmutation or a metamorphosis, if you will; it is still within the domain of the natural.  The spiritual always has its root and genesis in the physical.  We do not degrade the spiritual in such a conception; we open our eyes to the spirituality of the physical.  And this is what science has always been doing and is doing more and more—­making us familiar with marvelous and transcendent powers that hedge us about and enter into every act of our lives.  The more we know matter, the more we know mind; the more we know nature, the more we know God; the more familiar we are with the earth forces, the more intimate will be our acquaintance with the celestial forces.

X

When we speak of the gulf that separates the living from the non-living, are we not thinking of the higher forms of life only?  Are we not thinking of the far cry it is from man to inorganic nature?  When we get down to the lowest organism, is the gulf so impressive?  Under the scrutiny of biologic science the gulf that separates the animal from the vegetable all but vanishes, and the two seem to run together.  The chasm between the lowest vegetable forms and unorganized matter is evidently a slight affair.  The state of unorganized protoplasm which Haeckel named the Monera, that precedes the development of that architect of life, the cell, can hardly be more than one remove from inert matter.  By insensible molecular changes and transformations of energy, the miracle of living matter takes place.  We can conceive of life arising only through these minute avenues, or in the invisible, molecular constitution of matter itself.  What part the atoms and electrons, and the energy they bear, play in it we shall never know.  Even if we ever succeed in bringing the elements together in our laboratories so that there living matter appears, shall we then know the secret of life?

After we have got the spark of life kindled, how are we going to get all the myriad forms of life that swarm upon the earth?  How are we going to get man with physics and chemistry alone?  How are we going to get this tremendous drama of evolution out of mere protoplasm from the bottom of the old geologic seas?  Of course, only by making protoplasm creative, only by conceiving as potential in it all that we behold coming out of it.  We imagine it equal to the task we set before it; the task is accomplished; therefore protoplasm was all-sufficient.  I am not postulating any extra-mundane power or influence; I am only stating the difficulties which the idealist experiences when he tries to see life in its nature and origin as the scientific mind sees it.  Animal