I don’t soar; I keep down pretty close to earth. Of course there are problems in life I can’t help thinking about, but I don’t try to study them out. It is necessary that they should be studied, and men fitted for that work are doing it. I am not fitted for it. I leave the theoretical study of electricity to the physicists, confining my work to the practical application of the force. It is my belief, however, that every atom of matter is intelligent, deriving energy from the primordial germ. The intelligence of man is, I take it, the sum of the intelligences of the atoms of which he is composed. Every atom has an intelligent power of selection and is always striving to get into harmonious relation with other atoms. The human body is, I think, maintained in its integrity by the intelligent persistence of its atoms, or rather by an agreement between the atoms so to persist. When the harmonious adjustment is destroyed the man dies, and the atoms seek other relations. I cannot regard the odor of decay but as the result of the efforts of the atoms to dissociate themselves; they want to get away and make new combinations. Man, therefore, may be regarded in some sort as a microcosm of atoms agreeing to constitute his life as long as order and discipline can be maintained. But, of course, there is dissatisfaction, rebellion and anarchy leading eventually to death, and through death to new forms of life. For life I regard as indestructible. All matter lives, and everything that lives possesses intelligence. Consider growing corn, for example. An atom of oxygen comes flying along the air. It seeks combination with other atoms and goes to the corn, not by chance, but by intention. It is seized by other atoms that need oxygen, and is packed away in the corn where it can do its work. Now carbon, hydrogen and oxygen enter into the composition of every organic substance in one form of arrangement or another. The formula _CHO_, in fact, is almost universal. Very well, then, why does a free atom of carbon select any particular one out of 50,000 or more possible positions unless it wants to? I cannot see how we can deny intelligence to this act of volition on the part of the atom. To say that one atom has an affinity for another is simply to use a big word. The atom is conscious if man is conscious, is intelligent if man is intelligent, exercises will-power if man does, is, in its own little way, all that man is. We are told by geologists that in the earliest periods no form of life could exist on the earth.