There is a type of politician at the present day who is convinced that the highest purpose to which land can be put is to build upon it; that being, in general, the use giving the highest money return per square foot, though the return does not always fall to the builder. It has taken not a little agitation and popular pressure to enforce the truth that cultivated land is also of use. But there are few who realize that land that is neither built upon nor cultivated is also essential. Our barren moors and bleak hillsides, "wastelands" as we call them, are absolutely necessary as collectors of the water by which we live. From them our springs take their source; and they supply our cities with the first necessity of life. We find, then, in this universe so far as we can know it, that Space is lavishly provided, Matter is lavishly scattered, Time is unsparingly drawn upon, but Life in any form, and especially in its highest form, is, relatively speaking, very sparsely given. That very circumstance surely points to the overwhelming importance of conscious, intelligent Life, and the insignificance of lifeless matter in comparison with it. We have to exhaust arithmetic in computing the size, the mass, the output of heat and light of our Sun, yet it is but the hearth-fire and lamp of terrestrial life; and its amazing agglomeration of matter and energy is ungrudgingly devoted to this humble purpose. Whatever view we hold as to the scheme of the universe; whether with the unthinking we fail to recognize Thought and Purpose behind its marvellous manifestations, or, with the thoughtful, realize that only Infinite Thought could provide so wonderfully for the bringing forth of thought in living material organisms, the conclusion still remains: living intelligences are, by the direct testimony of the universe itself, its noblest and most precious product. The plea is often made that as we find life adapting itself to a great variety of conditions on this Earth, we must not set limits to its power of adaption to the conditions of other worlds. But this plea is an unthinking one. The range of conditions through which we find life on this Earth is as nothing to the range given by the varied sizes and positions of the different planets; and even on our Earth, life in the unfavoured regions--the tops of mountains, the polar snows, the waterless deserts, the ocean depths--is only possible because there are more favoured regions close at hand, and there are, as it were, "crumbs that fall from the rich man's table." A well-known littérateur in setting forth "a hundred ways of making money" gave great prominence to the method of living as caretaker in an empty house. But residing in an empty house does not, in itself, supply the means of sustenance; these have to be furnished by the wealthier man who employs the caretaker.