“Man capable of explaining his own existence!” I seem to hear the reader exclaim, as he peruses the eloquent passage borrowed from Dr. Draper, in our last chapter; “it is a vain dream; we shall never be able to say what life is.” Perhaps not; yet we should not be too hasty in deciding on this negative. Nothing can seem more improbable, as that question has been put, than that it should ever receive a satisfactory reply; but may there not have been an error in the way of putting it? Problems that are truly simple sometimes come before us in a very difficult form, owing to pre-conceptions in our minds, and demand for their solution not great ingenuity or power, but that we should disembarrass ourselves of false persuasions. One of the greatest intellects has left on record the maxim—it is part of the rich legacy bequeathed by the author of the Novum Organon—that “a wise seeking is the half of knowing.” According to our first impression, a wide gulf separates that which has life from that which has not. We naturally, therefore, prejudge the very point at issue, and assume in living things the possession of a peculiar endowment, which is the cause of all that is distinctive in them. And then, with this idea in our minds, we strive in vain to untie the knot.