102 THE ORIGINATION OF LIVING BEINGS 



plant (page 20, fig. 7). The Bacteriums (fig. 6) are of rather 

 doubtful nature. They may be very lowly organized animals; 

 but I think rather that they are plants (see page 24). The 

 Vibrios (p. 18, fig. 5, b) are what one might call a chain of 

 Amoebas moving in a winding or spiral course with great rapid- 

 ity. As for the Kolpoda-like bodies, (fig. 5, e,) no one would 

 question that they are living creatures. They move by the 

 action of vibratile cilia, which are eminently characteristic of 

 life. Whether these beings develop by going through a sort 

 of egg-state, or seed-state, we cannot say, but even if it were 

 so, it would be none the less the development of living beings ; 

 for I have shown that the egg is merely an early stage of the 

 animal. 



And here I would say that the eggs of all animals may be 

 said to essentially depend upon physical causes for their devel- 

 opment ; even those which are nourished by a parent for a 

 considerable portion of their life. They live merely as para- 

 sites upon the parent, and absorb the nourishing fluids under 

 exactly the same conditions as do the parasitic worms, which 

 live in the liver, intestines, blood-vessels, etc., of animals. Now 

 we may have all degrees of dependence upon the parent, from 

 the placental absorbing relation, which I have just spoken 

 of, to that relation in which the egg is expelled, as in birds, 

 frogs, fishes, etc., long before there is the least trace of organs in 

 it. Hence we have, in consequence, all degrees of dependence 

 upon physical agents for the development of the egg into a fully 

 organized animal. 



Is it not plain that secondary causes are at work here ? 



Not the veriest theistic naturalist will deny, or has ever 

 denied, that the egg, when laid, is dependent upon physical 

 causes for development, or that those causes are secondary 

 causes. These are facts which have become common property 

 to all naturalists and physiologists, and yet, strange to say, many 

 cry out in alarm if some one recognizes these self-same secondary 

 causes where they have not been seen to apply before. Richard 

 Owen, of the British Museum, the greatest of all the natural- 



