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new life is continually being evolved. Professor Huxley is quite in 

 agreement with Spencer and Bastian as to the beginning of life, but 

 appears to think that existing conditions of matter on the earth's 

 surface are not favorable to new beginnings of life. Dr. A. Wilson sums 

 lip the question in the following words : " Although research has not 

 as yet finally placed the puzzle of life and its solution at our feet, our 

 inquiries have at least served to indicate the direction towards which 

 modern scientific faith is slowly but surely tending. The search after a 

 material cause for phenomena formerly regarded as thoroughly occult or 

 supernatural in origin, is not a feature limited to life science alone- 

 Such a characteristic of modern research indicates with sufficient clear- 

 ness the fact that, as biology and physics become more intimately con- 

 nected, the explanations of the phenomena of life will rest more and 

 more upon a purely physical and appreciable basis. That life had 

 a distinct beginning upon the earth's surface is proved by astronomical 

 and geological deductions. That life appeared oa this world's surface, 

 not in its present fulness, but in an order leading from simple forms to 

 those of an ever increasing complexity, is an inference which geology 

 proves, and which the study of animal and plant development fully 

 supports. 



That the first traces of life existed in the form of protoplasmic 

 germs, represented to-day by the lowest of animal and plant forms, or 

 rather by those organisms occupying the debatable territory between 

 the animal and plant worlds, is well nigh as warrantable a supposition as 

 any of tho preceding. And last of all, that these first traces of proto- 

 plasm were formed by the intercalation of new combinations of the 

 matter and force already and previously existing in the universe is no 

 mere unsupported speculation, but one to which chemistry and physics 

 lend a willing countenance. Living beings depend on the outer world 

 for the means of subsistence to-day. Is it more wonderful or less 

 logical to conceive that at the beginning the living worlds derived their 

 substance and energy wholly from the same source 1 The common 

 origin of animal and vegetable life, and the further unity of nature 

 involved in the idea that the living worlds are in reality the outcome of 

 the lifeless past, constitute thoughts which leave no break in the har- 

 mony of creation." 



