28 PEOCBEDINGS OF THB 



The remaining 4, being first and last pages, hold fewer lines of 

 print. The type is far from small and spaced so that a complete 

 page holds 27 lines. 



The pamphlet contains a brief introduction, not included in the 

 36 pages referred to above, and two lectures stated to have been 

 delivered in Boston in 1847, — " The Origin of Life and the advance 

 of civihzation,"' and "The Dangers of the Unseen." 



"Within a space thus hmited, the ideas in the following 

 pages are propounded. The author's words, except in the con- 

 cluding paragraph of the booklet, are quoted without comment, 

 but I have printed in italics at the head of each section the 

 various subjects with which he deals. I have also inserted a few 

 words in square brackets and added one or two footnotes in order 

 to show the relationship between some of the author's sentences 

 or to make some brief explanation. 



Lecxuee I. 

 THE OEIGIN OF LIFE 



AlfD THE ADVANCE OY CIVILIZATION. 



i. The Origin of Life in minute particles scattered tlirougli space — a 

 view similar to that brought forivarcl by Arrhenius in 1906. 



" Life owes its faint beginning to primal germs. 



These germs I hold to be infiuitesimally minute living atoms 

 pervading the entire terrestrial atmosphere ; and, perhaps, 

 the entity of the Cosmos. 



" Perishable themselves, each is the common carrier of the 



principle of Life which is indestructible and eternal, " 



(p. 3.) 



ii. natural Selection. 



" Arranging themselves in strict obedience to dominant 

 Natural laws of which we have but little knowledge, in a 

 vastness of Space of which we have no intelligent conception, 

 and exhibiting an almost unmeasurable minuteness reducing 

 our feeble powers of comprehension to appalled nothingness, 

 these germs are slowly developed, altered and perfected 

 during an immensity of periods of time compared to which 

 the six thousand years of the Bible is but a trifling era — a 

 pebble on the sea shore ; a tiny star in the Milky Way. 



" These germs of life and the individuals growing out of 

 them, were constantly experiencing change. Weakened by 

 exposure and attack they were only preserved unmodified 

 for a brief (though variable) period by means of the more 

 or less effectual resistance they were able to offer to climatic 



