20 JOURNAL OF THE [January, 



of vital units if they were only extremely small and practically 

 characterless ; and, like other evolutionists, he appears to attach 

 great importance to the influence of mere temperature in the 

 production of the very first living things ; for he says : "Grant- 

 ing that the formation of organic matter, and the evolution of 

 life in its lowest forms, may go on under existing cosmical con- 

 ditions ; but believing it more likely that the formation of such 

 matter and such forms took place at a time when the heat of 

 the Earth's surface was falling through those ranges of tem- 

 perature at which the higher organic compounds are unstable ; 

 I conceive that the moulding of such organic matter into the 

 simplest types must have commenced with portions of pro- 

 toplasm more minute, more indefinite, and more inconstant in 

 their characters, than the lowest Rhizopods, — less distinguish- 

 able from a mere fragment of albumen than even the Proto- 

 genes of Professor Haeckel." 



Such minute, indefinite, and inconstant fragments of albumen 

 are of course very different things from the forms which Pou- 

 chet and Bastian found in their hermetically sealed culture 

 tubes ; and Mr. Spencer declares that he "can penetrate deep 

 enough to see that a tenable hypothesis respecting the origin of 

 organic life must be reached by some other clew than that 

 furnished by experiments on decoction of hay and extract of 

 beef." As we now know, the experiments to which he refers 

 really furnished no clew whatever. But the complete demolish- 

 ment of Pouchet and Bastian by Pasteur and Tyndall is a mat- 

 ter of comparative insignificance, in view of the avoidance of 

 the whole subject of experimental evidence by Mr. Spencer's 

 adoption of the position that the conception of '' first organ- 

 isms " is wholly at variance with the conception of Evolution ; 

 that there is not and never was any such thing as an absolute 

 commencement of life. On this subject he says : " Construed 

 in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a 

 product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a 

 preexisting kind of being ; and this holds as fully of the sup- 

 posed ' commencement of organic life ' as of all subsequent 

 developments of organic life. It is no more needful to sup- 

 pose an ' absolute commencement of organic life ' or a ' first 

 organism ' than it is needful to suppose an absolute commence- 

 ment of social life and a first social organism. * * * 



