5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 



By the DUKE OF AEGYLL. 



II. 



[Concluded.] 



BUT now if Nature has indeed never stopped her operations 

 at any one time if they have been, on the contrary, always 

 continuous in unity of plan amid every change in method, then 

 it follows that we do not know how often new germs may have 

 been introduced and may have had their full development accel- 

 erated by processes of comparatively short duration. Darwin, in 

 a passage but little noted, has thought of this. He speaks of 

 stages of development being possibly " hurried through." * We 

 see this actually done in the living world, although we do not often 

 think of it as we ought. It is done in all the mysterious phenom- 

 ena of metamorphosis. A comparatively low and simple organ- 

 ism goes to sleep, and in a few weeks or a few days, or even, 

 it may be, in a few hours it awakes entirely reformed, recon- 

 structed, provided with new organs, and fitted for absolutely new 

 spheres of activity and life. We do not know whether this 

 method of creation may not have been repeated over and over 

 again with abiogenic germs just as it is now repeated in an in- 

 finite variety of forms among the germs which are biogenic. I 

 am contending now for a true and honest agnosticism and not for 

 any theory. We do .not know that inheritance by descent is the 

 only possible or the only actual cause of likeness and homologies 

 in organic structure. It is not the cause of it as regards the in- 

 organic world, and it may not be the only cause of it in those 

 houses which have been made out of inorganic materials to be the 

 abodes of life. It is indeed not possible that inheritance can be 

 the only cause of likeness if it be granted that the first starting- 

 point of development must have been in germs which had no or- 

 ganic parent. On the other hand, we can be quite certain of the 

 reason why organs should be made like each other, although we 

 can not be sure of the physical causes through which exclusively 

 this likeness must be brought about. The reason is that certain 

 needs must be met by appropriate apparatuses vital, chemical, 

 and mechanical. Extraneous matter must be assimilated, weight 

 must be supported, circulating fluids must be supplied with oxy- 

 gen, light must be caught upon adapted surfaces, and must be 

 transmitted through focused lenses, if sight is to be enjoyed. 

 And so on. The Why is within our knowledge. The How is most 

 doubtful and most obscure. Geology, above all other sciences, 



* Origin of Species, sixth edition, p. 149. 



