The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-03-13

hun, i,ks epchanted bees. The Elixir of Love is one of them. It suggests cups of moonlight and kisses, brews or mowers and stars. The alchemist whom the vision of 1t first visited must have arisen thereafter drunk with the nectar he had slipped in dream.
 The legend of the phfltre returned to us recently when, for lack or anything mora entertaining, we happened to be reading a back number of the Under takers Review. There is an engaging ueriodical. It contained an article on the Elixir of Life.
 In considering the humor of that a problem popped out. Which of the two elixirs Is to be preferred ?-provided, of course. that both were procurable. Yet in that case how altogether delightful ex- istence would be could they be fused and then blended in an Elixir of Lucre.
 Love, life and lucre! There are three words so small, so simple, yet so seduc- tive that the rest of the dictionary is routed by the sorceries of their spells. In them everything is comprised. They are the motor forces of the world. Of the flesh, too, and the devil. A formula capable of combining and providing the lot would rather fill, don't you think, long felt want.
 You may object that anything so agree able is quite impossible. But nothing is impossible. Moreover, something of the kind there used to be- Paracelsus had formula for which, though he could not make 1t work. all alchemists had a fever Then, too, when days had a thousand and one nights and, a trifie earlier. when the Arcadian dusks were ahlaze with gods. you could, If you were good-or not that exactly, gracious Is perhaps better term-have had 1t for the asking. and even without.
 Of course all this seems quite mythi- cal now. But myths are merely stories that might have been true. and what might have been may yet be.
 Producing Artificial Life.
 Yes. indeed. Besides. we have a pre- text for these remarks, and, what is bet ter, a text The Bulletin de Physiologie contains an account of the doings of a group of scientists, who-to their own surprise, perhaps, and certainly to ours have succeeded in the artificial produc- tion of life.
 That is rather opulcnt, Is it not? For given. don't you see, the ability of manu- facture life, there is no telling where it will stop, if stop 1t ever does. By com parison with the vistas which the experi- ments disclose the visions of the alche- nnists become cheap and tales of Area dia stupid. In these vitas you behold the remodelling of the whole scheme of things, and with 1t humanfesSs recon structon.
 All this, of course is quite a month of Sundays off. Thus far only little has been accomplished. But little Is some times enormous. In the present experi- ments the manufacturer of life has, as yet. been limited to a protoplasm. Per- sonally we would not know a protoplasm if we saw one. But if we may believe everything we hear, it Is from a germ of this genus that humanity, through ascending types, proceeded.
 That is what you might call the alpha bet of evolution. After the alphabet the grammar. In the latter there Is a. dis cord so obvious between life as it might pe and life as 1t is that a fearsome amount of pessimism has resulted.
 Pessimism is becoming in people who are young, affluent and good Joking. It is not only becoming, 1t is poetic. But oc- casionally it is practical. With that grammar, for instance. 1t long since pointed out that some time or other evo- lation hlundered, and that as a result are we merely mishts. It has shown that we have desires and aspirations which life can never fulfil, and it has intimated that to remedy this condition of things resorts such as Elysium, Val halla, Paradise and Devachan were con- structed. What you could not get here, you know, these plaisances supplied. Since which science has pulled them to pieces.
 That would be unfortunate were it not that, in view of the experiments mem tioned, it is possible to put them together and build them up, and, though up, not above, not in archipelagoes of dream, but in domains of delight, enterable on earth and not confined to soicety either.
 Paradise of the Plebeian,
 Society-smart socity, that is-we once defined as the paradise of the plebeian. When you do not happen to be in it, you know, it looks extraordinarily blissful. It smells of peris and plutocrats, with noth- ing whatever to do and doing it to perfec- tion. But when you come to look them over you find that they differ from other rolk only in that they have few extra wants and a few extraordinary airs. Otherwise they have the same inhrmaties. Age overtakes them, senilia too, some- times scandals. inevitably boredom, and the suspicion, which we all entertain, that nothing is quite as it might be.
 It is, indeed, a very entertaining sus- picion. But 1t is not new. It was handed out long ago, though whether by Solon or Solomon we have forgotten, and 1t is too much bother to look it up. Yet, anyway, ages since, somebody or other discovering that there. is a screw loose and not knowing just where and still less just why. consulted every authority with in reach. only to receive from each oi them a different and divergent opinion.
 For there. don't you see. Is the enter taining part of this suspicion. We fee that we are rocked, but we cannot tel how, we cannot tell why and particular! when. Stages have tried and tried il vain. One of them, whose name wal Arouet, and who rechristened himsel Voltaire. said as he threw up his hands ''1t all seems to me pretty poor joke
 For that opinion Voltaire has beel much abused. He deserved to be. H could see the joke. but not the point Yet that is the way of the world. Wheth CT or not the joke is appreciated the poin is never clear. It is. perhaps, rathe far fetched. But that is because VI have to go back such a distance to fin, 1t. When we do we see that 1t Is bu a quip of nature, who. in providing II with conceptions of life as it ought to he provides. too. for life as 1t Is.
 There is the joke and the point of