But who knows whether the first living inhabitants of the warm sea on the young world, whom we ought perhaps to honor as our ancestors, would not have regarded our present cooler condition with as much horror as we look on a world without a sun? Considering the wonderful adaptability to the conditions of life which all organisms possess, who knows to what degree of perfection our posterity will have been developed in seventeen million years, and whether our fossilized bones will not perhaps seem to them as monstrous as those of the Ichthyosaurus now do; and whether they, adjusted for a more sensitive state of equilibrium, will not consider the extremes of temperature, within which we now exist, to be just as violent and destructive as those of the older geological times appear to us? Yea, even if sun and earth should solidify and become motionless, who could say what new worlds would not be ready to develop life? Meteoric stones sometimes contain hydrocarbons; the light of the heads of comets exhibits a spectrum which is most like that of the electrical light in gases containing hydrogen and carbon. But carbon is the element, which is characteristic of organic compounds, from which living bodies are built up. Who knows whether these bodies, which everywhere swarm through space, do not scatter germs of life wherever there is a new world, which has become capable of giving a dwelling-place to organic bodies. And this life we might perhaps consider as allied to ours in its primitive germ, however different might be the form which it would assume in adapting itself to its new dwelling-place.

However this may be, that which most arouses our moral feelings at the thought of a future, though possibly very remote, cessation of all living creation on the earth is more particularly the question whether all this life is not an aimless sport, which will ultimately fall a prey to destruction by brute force. Under the light of Darwin's great thought, we begin to see that, not only pleasure and joy, but also pain, struggle, and death, are the powerful means by which Nature has built up her finer and more perfect forms of life. And we men know more particularly that in our intelligence, our civic order, and our morality we are living on the inheritance which our forefathers have gained for us, and that which we acquire in the same way will, in like manner, ennoble the life of our posterity. Thus the individual, who works for the ideal objects of humanity, even if in a modest position, and in a limited sphere of activity, may bear without fear the thought that the thread of his own consciousness will one day

break. But even men of such free and large order of minds as Lessing and David Strauss could not reconcile themselves to the thought of a final destruction of the living race, and with it of all the fruits of all past generations.

As yet we know of no fact, which can be established by scientific observation, which would show that the finer and complex forms of vital motion could exist otherwise than in the dense material of organic life; that it can propagate itself as the sound-movement of a string can leave its originally narrow and fixed home and diffuse itself in the air, keeping all the time its pitch, and the most delicate shade of its color-tint; and that, when it meets another string attuned to it, starts this again or excites a flame ready to sing to the same tone. The flame even, which of all processes in inanimate nature is the closest type of life, may become extinct, but the heat which it produces continues to exist - indestructible, imperishable, as an invisible motion, now agitating the molecules of ponderable matter, and then radiating into boundless space as the vibration of an ether. Even there it retains the characteristic peculiarities of its origin, and it reveals its history to the inquirer who questions it by the spectroscope. United afresh, these rays may ignite a new flame, and thus, as it were, acquire a new bodily existence.

Just as the flame remains the same in appearance, and continues to exist with the same form and structure, although it draws every minute fresh combustible vapor, and fresh oxygen from the air, into the vortex of its ascending current; and just as the wave goes on in unaltered form, and is yet being reconstructed every moment from fresh particles of water, so also in the living being it is not the definite mass of substance which now constitutes the body, to which the continuance of the individual is attached. For the material of the body, like that of the flame, is subject to continuous and comparatively rapid changea change the more rapid the livelier the activity of the organs in question. Some constituents are renewed from day to day, some from month to month, and others only after years. That which continues to exist as a particular individual is like the flame and the wave-only the form of motion which continually attracts fresh matter into its vortex and expels the old. The observer with a deaf ear only recognizes the vibration of sound as long as it is visible and can be felt, bound up with heavy matter. Are our senses, in reference to life, like the deaf ear in this respect?

PATRICK HENRY

(1736-1799)

HE first great orator produced by the American spirit of resistance to arbitrary power, Patrick Henry, has had a narrow escape from Bolingbroke's fate of surviving in a reputation for great eloquence rather than in the authentic text of his really representative orations. The speech which made him his first reputation, forced him into leadership, and did so much to force issues with England, is not reported at all. It was delivered in the "Parson's Cause of 1763 against the claims of the church establishment in Virginia to use the taxing power of the State. From it dates church disestablishment in America- a charge almost as great as the Union of Church and State under Constantine. His next great speech, 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,' delivered in the Virginia Convention of March 1775, is represented by a version which has become an American classic. It has Wirt as authority for its accuracy. But from this time until 1788, when he poured out a flood of vehement argument against the adoption of the Federal Constitution, Henry is practically unreported. This is due, in a large part, to his great power as an orator. He is one of the very few men in history so quick in apprehension, and so prompt in expression, as to be really capable at all times of speaking extemporaneously and at the same time with their own greatest possibilities of effectiveness. Most men - most even of those who deserve to be called great orators have had the gift of fluent delivery only as an incident of ability to prepare themselves in advance by severe and connected thought—an ability which is rarer even than that of eloquence. That a man on the spur of the moment should speak as logically, as consistently, as effectively as most men of great intellect can only after preparation, is so extraordinary that it would be incredible if men like Patrick Henry had not lived to demonstrate it. Such eloquence has in it something of the force of the primitive "Rhapsodists," the unlettered poets and prophets whose extemporaneous outbursts of higher intelligence forced its first civilization on Europe.

Patrick Henry was born May 29th, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. He was the son of John Henry, a Scotchman of the humblest class, and it was not until after he had achieved his great success as an orator that he became identified with the landholding element

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which then governed Virginia. When at the age of twenty-four he applied for admission to the bar, he had failed in several previous attempts to make a start in life, and it is said that his knowledge of law was derived from a six weeks' course of study in it. Yet such was his natural ability to learn from every one and everything, that the most throughly trained lawyers in that day of severe legal training were no match for him in debate on the abstract principles of law. As a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia in 1765, he forced the colony into open opposition to England and, in connection with Thomas Jefferson and others, he led in the work of forming the first colonial Union. He served in the Continental Congress of 1774, and the next year, in the Virginia Convention, made his greatest speech the speech which made retrogression impossible for Virginia and converted those who had been Loyalists to the mother country into traitors to the Commonwealth. His record as Governor of Virginia between 1776 and 1786 has little to do with his history as an orator, but in 1788, when it was proposed to adopt a Federal Constitution, uniting not the States themselves, but the people, he opposed it with the most extraordinary vehemence and brilliancy ever witnessed in really extemporaneous oratory. He was a Federalist in the sense of desiring a "Federal Union"— that is a Union by treatyamong the States, but he reasoned that a Union of the people of the States as proposed in the preamble of the Constitution was a complete consolidation in the presence of which the claim of State sovereignty and actual autonomy would be folly.

Losing on the main issue, the contest he had made resulted in the adoption of the first ten amendments. In 1799, on the issue against the Alien and Sedition Laws, the followers of Jefferson took the same position Henry had taken in the Virginia Convention, he sided against Jefferson and declared that since "unlimited power over sword and purse» had been intrusted to the Federal Government, there was nothing to do except submit to its exercise. The only remedy remaining, he said, was revolution, never to be resorted to except in the last extremity, and when resorted to, necessarily productive of conditions under which Americans "may bid adieu forever to representative government."

Henry died June 6th, 1799. He was one of the most remarkable men of modern times-unfortunate politically in his own generation only because he saw further into the future than any other man of his time dared attempt to see.

GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH

(Delivered at Richmond, in the Virginia Convention, on a Resolution to put the Commonwealth into a State of Defense, March 23d, 1775)

Mr. President :

N°

MAN thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the house. But different men often see the same subject in different lights, and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions. of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. 3 Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it..

I have but one lay by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house.

Is