This is the second characteristic of that alone which lives. By it, living matter is _sui generis_. Every instant, and at the same temperature, this inconceivably minute speck, without discoverable structure, effects analyses and complicated syntheses which either baffle all the synthetic chemistry of man, or else, where he is able to accomplish the simplest of the organic syntheses, it is by processes and at temperatures that make all life impossible. But more, this vital and inconceivably minute speck multiplies with astounding rapidity in two ways; by the first and common process, in the course of a minute and a half the entire body is divided into two precisely similar bodies, each one being perfect; almost immediately these again divide, and so on in geometric ratio through all the populated fluid; the rapidity of this intense and wonderful vital action transcending all thought. By this process alone a single form may in three hours give rise to a population of organisms as great as the human population of the globe. But this is not all; at certain stages of the organism self-division ceases. The final divisions result in strikingly modified forms of the organism; these approach each other and melt together. They are then shining globules without action, but at the end of a given time they open, and pour out a continuous cloud of minutest spore or ova, which are as countless as the sands; and from these arise again another host of the organisms, which pass again through all the mystery and marvel of this vital cycle. And this is the third of the qualities that make what lives absolutely unique amidst the things of earth. This is life—whether vegetable or animal none can determine—in the simplest form in which it can be known; life that is possessed only of the irreducible properties which are inalienable, and which distinguish it for ever and everywhere from what is not-life. It is true that the philosopher, by the common consent of mind, occupies the throne of intellect; but it is not, for all that, to the esoteric philosopher, not to the deep mental seer, who girdles all space, all duration, all phenomena with his thought, that nature reveals her latest, her subtlest, her profoundest secrets. It is to the patient student—nature’s loving learner, whose eye and ear are trained to read her faintest writing and catch her lowest whisper—that her deepest truths in all their strength and immediate bearing are disclosed. Yet the fates of philosophies are determined by these. Then what is the testimony of students and searchers as to the mode in which life takes its origin to-day? Does life originate _in_ life? or do we find that in our laboratories, and in the observed processes of nature _now_, the not-living can be, without the intervention of living things, changed into that which lives?