It is equally impossible to fix a particular point or moment for the manifestation of the crystal life as it is for that of the animal or the vegetable life. All are but gradual unfoldings of the universal potentiality. Crystal life is the highest development of what is popularly but erroneously termed inanimate nature, and differs not one iota from Moneron life, which is the lowest form of animal life, in its constituent elements, the only difference between the two being in the mode of combination of the elementary particles composing each. The crystal elements combine in such proportions as to cause the mass to hold together like other solid bodies, its bulk being increased by the deposition of fresh particles upon its outer surface; while the Moneron elements combine in such a manner as to render the body soft and yielding, so that it can absorb nutriment from without to within and multiply by fission. The elements of both are identically the same: the manner of combination causes the differences between them. Many learned men declare that, if this were true, we ought to be able to take the five elements—viz., Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, and Sulphur—in the necessary proportions, and, by uniting them, form animal life. This, they say, has been attempted, and the result has been failure; therefore, animal life could not have been generated in that manner, but must have been specially created at some particular moment. This argument is absurdly unsound. These persons might just as well say that, to substantiate the assertion that crystals are formed of a combination of elementary molecules, we ought to be able to take the necessary quantity of these elements, and, by uniting them together, form a crystal; and that, if this cannot be done, then crystals also require a special creation. The same argument for a special creation will apply to every species of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Protoplasm is the lowest form of animal life, differing from the highest form of mineral life only in the mode of combination of its elementary particles; but this difference causes the manifestation of fresh phenomena, in this case as in every other modification of a previous state of nature, which gives it the appearance of possessing a property that had not been possessed by any substance previously, whereas, in truth, the apparently new property is but a further development of that previously possessed by inorganic bodies. In short, the power of absorption possessed by the Moneron is simply one of the many manifestations of that universal life or energy that is inherent in all matter, and has been so from all time; but it is a comparatively late development, occurring at a particular period in the world’s history, when the conditions necessary for such a development were present. Before this period no such combination of molecular atoms took place with the same result, simply because the necessary conditions of development were absent.