comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.

In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[4] For like all living
principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
grand comprehensive _Datum_ on which all the objective, as well as
subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.

To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it