142 Dr Alison on the Principle of Vital Affinity. 



and peculiar arrangements of chemical elements there ob- 

 served are less numerous, and the laws regulating them more 

 simple, than they have usually been thought. 



In considering this subject, we are enabled, by the results 

 of the inquiries of geologists and physiologists, to revert to 

 the period of the introduction of living bodies into the world, 

 and reflect on the conditions then assigned for their existence. 

 We are justified, by reason, in allowing the imagination to 

 fall back on the time when this Earth rolled through space 

 an inanimate mass ; and if any minds, besides that of the 

 Great Ruler of the universe, were connected with it, they did 

 not hold their connection through the medium of any organ- 

 ized structure. For I believe we are justified in laying down 

 these propositions as established, ^r^/. That the simply phy- 

 sical arrangements of this globe were completed before any 

 organized beings were created ; secondly, That vegetables 

 were created and lived chiefly on the atmosphere, fixing large 

 quantities of carbon from it on the earth's surface, before ani- 

 mals were called into existence ; and, thirdly. That at what- 

 ever time their existence began, either the first living being 

 of every species, vegetable and animal, or the first ovum from 

 which that being was developed, must have been formed in 

 a manner wholly difi'erent from that in which any living 

 bodies, at least of the higher orders, are now reproduced ; i.e., 

 that they must have been formed in a manner strictly miracu- 

 lous, and, of course, beyond the limits of physical science. 



But although we cannot ascend higher, in prosecuting this 

 subject, than to inquire in what manner the first plants, or 

 the germs of the first plants, were enabled so to act on the 

 inorganic matter around them as to extract from it the mate- 

 rials, first of their own growth and sustentation, and after- 

 wards of all other organized beings, — yet in the inquiry, thus 

 limited, important progress has been made. From the time 

 when these nascent organized bodies sprung into existence, 

 we must regard it as an ultimate fact, that they were endow- 

 ed with the power, which all the vegetables that have suc- 

 ceeded them have exercised, of so modifying the attractions 

 existing among the particles of matter, as to cause many of 

 these particles from the air and the water immediately sur- 



