152 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
that he who has comprehended (which no man yet 
does) the mystery of a single spore or tissue-cell, 
has reached depths in the great “Science of Life” 
at which an Owen would still confess himself “‘ blind 
by excess of light.” “ Knowest thou how the bones 
grow in the womb?” asks the Jewish sage, sadly, 
half self-reprovingly, as he discovers that man is not 
the measure of all things, and that in much learning 
may be vanity and vexation of spirit, and in much 
study a weariness of the flesh; and all our deeper 
physical science only brings the same question more 
awfully near. “Vilior alga,’ more worthless than 
the very sea-weed, says the old Roman: and yet no 
torn scrap of that very sea-weed, which to-morrow 
may manure the nearest garden, but says to us, 
“Proud man! talking of spores and vesicles, if thou 
darest for a moment to fancy that to have seen 
spores and vesicles is to have seen me, or to know 
what I am, answer this. Knowest thou how the 
bones do grow in the womb? Knowest thou even 
how one of these tiny black dots, which thou callest 
spores, grow on my fronds?” And to that question 
