432 Mr. H. J. Carter on the Develojyment of the Sponge-Spicule. 



even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all " 

 (Ecclesiastes, xi. 5). 



Undoubtedly the power which developes the ovum, and 

 causes it to pass into the new being, acts without brain and 

 organs of sense. It is a power which pervades all nature, and 

 is infinite. Hence, as our brain and organs of sense are 

 secondary products with a finite power, we can never compre- 

 hend the infinite one. So that all idea of ever finding out how 

 things come into existence or grow may as well be abandoned. 

 We can see a crystal as soon as it is formed, but the highest 

 magnifying-power does not enable us to see it come into exis- 

 tence or increase in size. As familiar instances of this power, 

 we might perhaps mention the return of the messenger-pigeon 

 direct to its home, the bee to its hive, the young cuckoos 

 to the land of their parents, &c. But the instances are infinite, 

 as the power is unknown ; like that of the mind itself, we only 

 recognize it by its manifestations. It is called " instinct," and 

 is regarded by most as a kind of inferior intelligence ; but it 

 can see without eyes and reason without a brain, better than 

 we can do Avith either. In short, it is nature unbounded, of 

 which man is but a finite imitator. 



So also in investigations with the microscope, it seems to 

 me highly unphilosophic to speak without modification of the 

 " structureless jelly," to wit, of an Amoeba, or of the absence 

 of a cell or layer round this animalcule or any body of the 

 kind, because it is not demonstrable to our senses. The leg 

 of a Eiqjlotes is probably as complicated in its muscular appa- 

 ratus as that of a crab-claw, yet it is as transparent and 

 apparently structureless as glass. The texture of a cell- or 

 surface-layer may be infinitely delicate or infinitely dense. 

 There is no difficulty in calling it such under the latter j and 

 it would be unphilosophic to deny its existence in the former. 

 There are, no doubt, textures in the Spongiadee that loom, as 

 it were in the misty distance of development, which in higher 

 animals can be recognized by the coarsest sense ; but in the 

 former condition we should only speak of them as such, and 

 not with that certainty that we would of the latter. The atoms 

 which make up the complicated and beautifully formed body 

 of a Enphtes rush about before us, under the microscope, as a 

 whole, with the appearance of being as tough and compact 

 almost as a crab. But let death occur, and the phenomenon 

 called "diffiuence" will immediately succeed, in which the 

 atoms fall asunder like a bunch of iron-filings held together by 

 magnetism, when the latter is suddenly withdrawn. Lastly, 

 both motion and change of form may be infinitely slow 



