perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled. Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human soul. Besides, we find _it true in fact_, since the earth is constantly teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law impressed upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.-- "If this faith fail, The pillar'd firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble." Chapter VII. What Is Life? Its Various Theories. The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to determine. It furnishes no objective _datum_ on which to predicate attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as the coordination of the _vis vitae_ in nature, which is an undisguised form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical proposition. To say of life that it is "a coördination of action," might be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise, crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication, analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and uniformity of expression, in designating as a _power, property, force_, etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of all life in the universe. Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases, borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "_Jupiter est genitor_," "_Jupiter est quodcunque vivit_," etc., which, although uninspired utterances, strike their roots deeply into the _terra incognita_ of consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted," he was as conclusively indulging in the _argumentum in circulo_ as if he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement _x-y_ the antithesis of _x+y_--one of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed in the formula.