270 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



ciple of ' evolution ; ' Buffou that of ' cpigenesis ; ' Hunter would 

 now be classed with the ' epigenesists/ . . . ' Pre-existence 

 of tjorms' and * evolution' are logically inseparable from the idea 

 of the origin of species by primary miraculously created individ- 

 uals. Cuvior, therefore, maintained both, as firmly as did Ilaller." 



To meet the question of " whence the first organic matter?" 

 the nomogenist (epigenesist) "is reduced to enumerate the ex- 

 isting elements into which the simplest living jelly (protogenes of 

 Ilaeckel) or sarcode {Aincehu) is resolval)le, and to contrast the 

 degreeof probability of such elements combining, under unknown 

 conditions, as the first step in the resolution of other forces inio 

 vital force, with the degree of probability remaining, after the 

 observations above recorded, of the interposition of a miraculous 

 power associating these elements into living germs, or forms 

 with powers of projxigating their kind to all time, as the sole 

 condition of their ubiquitous manifestation, in the absence of any 

 secondary law thereto ordained. 



*' It seems to me more consistent with the present phase of dy- 

 namical science and the obsei-ved gradations of living things, to 

 suppose that sarcode, or the * protogenaP jelly-speck, should be 

 formable through concurrence of conditions favoring such com- 

 bination of their elements and involving a change of force pro- 

 ductive of their contractions and extensions, molecular attrac- 

 tions and repulsions — and that sarcode has so become, from the 

 period when its irrelative repetitions resulted in the vast ind(;fi- 

 nite masses of ' eozoon,' exemplifying the earliest process of 

 ♦ formification ' or organic crystallization — than that all existing 

 sarcodes or ' protogenes' are the result of genetic descent from a 

 germ or cell due to a primary act of miraculous interposition." 



Dismissing the old doctrines as absurd, he believes in what has 

 been called " spontaneous generation," or the incessant new de- 

 velopment of living beings out of non living material. He sides 

 with Pouchet and Child against Pasteur. Ho does not believe in 

 *' panspermism," or the doctrine that all the forms of life pro- 

 duced in decaying organic matter come from germs dispersed 

 through the air. He prefers believing that, when the requisite 

 material and conditions are present, other forces are resolved into 

 vital force; and sees "the grandeur of creative power," not in the 

 exceptional miracle of one or few original forms of life, but in the 

 ♦'daily and hourly calling into life many forms by conversion of 

 chemical and physical into vital modes of force." The *' Cause 

 which has endowed his world with power convertible into mag- 

 netic, electiic, thermotic, and other forms or modes of force, has 

 also added the conditions of conversion into the vital mode." 



He draws a comparison between life and magnetism, and be- 

 tween all the actions of living beings, from the attraction of the 

 amoeba hj a bit of meat, to the highest j)henomenon of conscious- 

 ness in man ; of which his conclusion is that from the magnet 

 which chooses between steel and zinc, to the philosopher who 

 chooses between good and evil, the difference is one of degree, 

 not of kind, and that there is no need to assuii^e a special miracle 

 to account for mental phenomena. 



