Address by Professor Rice. xliii 



tinucus evolution from the .dawn of life to the varied flora and 

 fauna of to-day, crowned with glory by the appearance of man 

 himself, we can hardly fail to accept the suggestion that the tran- 

 sition from the lifeless to the living was itself a process of evolu- 

 tion. Though the supposed instances of spontaneous generation 

 all resolve themselves into errors of experimentation, though the 

 power of chemical synthesis, in spite of the vast progress it has 

 made, stops far short of the complexity of protoplasm, though we 

 must confess ourselves unable to imagine any hypothesis for the 

 origin of that complex apj^aratus which the microscope is reveal- 

 ing to us in the infinitesimal laboratory of the cell, are we not 

 compelled to believe that the law of continuity has not been 

 broken, and that at least a reasonable hypothesis as to the method 

 of natural transition from the lifeless to the living may yet be 

 within reach of human discovery ? 



Still further. Are we content to believe that evolution began 

 with the nebula? Are we satisfied to assume our chemical atoms 

 as an ultimate and inexplicable fact \ Herschel and Maxwell, 

 indeed, have reasoned, from the supposed absolute likeness of 

 atoms of any particular element, that they bear " the stamp of a 

 manufactured article," and must therefore be supposed to have 

 been specially created at some definite epoch of beginning. But, 

 when we are speaking of things of which we know so little as we 

 know of atoms, there is logically a boundless difference between 

 saying that we know no difference between the atoms of hydrogen 

 and saying that we know there is no difference. Is it not legiti- 

 mate for us to recognize here again the direction in which 

 analogy points, and to ask whether those fundamental units of 

 physical nature, the atoms themselves, may not be products of 

 evolution ? Thus analogy suggests to us the question, wliether 

 there is any beginning of the series of evolutionary changes w^hich 

 we see stretching backward into the remote past ; whether the 

 nebulae from which systems have been evolved w^ere not them- 

 selves evolved ; whether existing forms of matter were not 

 evolved from other forms that we know not ; wdiether creative 

 Power and creative Intelligence have not been eternally immanent 

 in an eternal universe. I cannot help thinking that theology may 

 fitly welcome such a suggestion, as relieving it from the incon- 

 gruous notion of a benevolent Deity spending an eternity in soli- 



