To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest: "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again, Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been All rudely trampled on by hostile foe, Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain The long night through, and wake at early dawn To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!" R. W. Wright. West Cheshier, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883. Prefatory. The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of salutation untouched. The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: _That the primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions exist_. The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament. The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the biblical and scientific scholar. In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall into the same lines of incidence in human thought.