7ii.J ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 121 



apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost 

 stocking to common sense. 



What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different 

 from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, 

 than the various kinds of living beings ? What community 

 of faculty can there be between the brightly- coloured 

 lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral in- 

 crustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the 

 painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the 

 botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? 



Again, think of the microscopic fungus — a mere infi- 

 nitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration 

 enough to multiply into countless millions in the body 

 of a living fly ; and then of the wealth of foliage, the 

 luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies betw T een this 

 bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, 

 towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the 

 Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, 

 and endures while nations and empires come and go 

 around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other 

 half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great 

 Finncr whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, 

 disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and 

 blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the 

 stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would founder 

 hopelessly; and contrast him with the invisible animal- 

 cules — mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, 

 in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same 

 ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. 

 With these images before your minds, you may well ask, 

 what community of form, or structure, is there between 

 the animalcule and the whale ; or between the fungus and 

 the fig-tree ? And, a fortiori, between all four ? 



Finally, if we regard substance, or material composi- 

 tion, what hidden bond can connect the flower which a 



