A Physicist on Evolution. 195 



tion of the general public, had not only occupied many reflecting 

 minds, but had been formally broached by one of them before the 

 ' Origin of Species ' appeared. 



The origination of life is a point lightly touched upon, if at 

 all, by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Spencer. Diminishing gradually the 

 number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one " pri- 

 mordial form " ; but he does not say, as far as I remember, how he 

 supposes this form to have been introduced. He quotes with satisfac- 

 tion the words of a celebrated author and divine who had " gradually 

 learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to 

 believe He created a few original forms, capable of self-development 

 into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh 

 act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws." 

 What Mr. Darwin thinks of this view of the introduction of life I 

 do not know. Whether he does or does not introduce his " primor- 

 dial form " by a creative act, I do not know. But the question 

 will inevitably be asked, " How came the form there ? " With 

 regard to the diminution of the number of created forms, one does 

 not see that much advantage is gained by it. The anthropo- 

 morphism, which it seemed the object of Mr. Darwin to set aside, 

 is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with 

 the creation of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness 

 here. Two courses, and two only, are possible. Either let us 

 open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or abandon- 

 ing them, let us radically change our notions of matter. If we 

 look at matter as pictured by Democritus, and as defined for gene- 

 rations in our scientific text-books, the absolute impossibility of any 

 form of life coming out of it would be sufficient to render any other 

 liypothesis preferable ; but the definitions of matter given in our 

 text-books were intended to cover its purely physical and mechanical 

 properties. And taught as we have been to regard these definitions 

 as complete, we naturally and rightly reject the monstrous notion 

 that out of such matter any form of life could possibly arise. But 

 are the definitions complete ? Everything depends on the answer 

 to be given to this question. Trace the hne of life backwards, and 

 see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely phy- 

 sical condition. We reach at length those organisms which I have 

 compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and 

 water. We reach the frotogenes of Haeckel, in which we have "a 

 type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely 

 granular character." Can we pause here ? We break a magnet 

 and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the pro- 

 cess of breaking, but however small the parts, each carries with it, 

 though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we can 

 break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar 

 molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in the case 



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