212 THE DAWN OF LIFE. 



palace. The profound significance which this has, 

 reaches beyond the domain of the physical and vital, 

 even to the spiritual. It clings to all our conceptions 

 of living things : quite as much, for example, to the 

 evolution of an animal with all its parts from a one- 

 celled germ, or to the connection of brain-cells with 

 the manifestations of intelligence. Viewed in this 

 way, we may share with the author of the sentence I 

 have quoted his feeling of veneration in the presence 

 of this great wonder of animal life, '^ burning, and not 

 consumed,^^ nay, building up, and that in many and 

 beautiful forms. We may realize it most of all in the 

 presence of the organism which was perhaps the first 

 to manifest on our planet these marvellous powers. 

 We must, however, here also, beware of that credulity 

 which makes too many thinkers limit their conceptions 

 altogether to physical force in matters of this kind. 

 The merely materialistic physiologist is really in no 

 better position than the savage who quails before the 

 thunderstorm, or rejoices in the solar warmth, and see- 

 ing no force or power beyond, fancies himself in the 

 immediate presence of his God. In Eozoon we must 

 discern not only a mass of jelly, but a being endowed 

 with that higher vital force which surpasses vegetable 

 life and also physical and chemical forces; and in this 

 animal energy we must see an emanation from a Will 

 higher than our own, ruling vitality itself; and this not 

 merely to the end of constructing the skeleton of a 

 Protozoon, but of elaborating all the wonderful de- 

 velopments of life that were to follow in succeeding 



