exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.

The bridge will never be built.




Chapter II.

Life--Its True Genesis.



The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and