specific Genesis 1 1 5 



invoke in our favour the authority, once more, of Professor 

 Tyndall, who can hardly be deemed even by Mr. Chauncey 

 Wright as incompetent in 'experimental philosophy,' or as 

 likely to forget ' the age of the world in which he lives.' In 

 the little work already quoted ^ he tells us : — 



' This tendency on the part of matter to organise itself, to grow 

 into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to the definite action 

 of force, is, as 1 have said, all-pervading. It is in the ground on 

 which you tread, in the water you drink, in the air you breathe. In- 

 cipient life, as it were, manifests itself throughout the whole of what 

 we call organic nature.' 



Speaking of a Hving grain of corn, and comparing it with 

 a crystal, he tells us we are bound ' to conclude that the 

 molecules of the com are seLf-posited by the forces with 

 which they act upon each other. It would be 'poor philo- 

 sophy to invoke an external agent in the one case and to reject 

 it in the other.' 



Mr. Wright, however, as I have shown, invokes what is 

 innate in the case of organisms and rejects it in the case of 

 crystals, and asserts that in organisms what is innate is so 

 predominant in its action, that external conditions ' modify ' 

 them ' very little' 



Passing over how important an admission this is against 

 any effective action of Natural Selection, let us see how it 

 tells against the analogy maintained. 



Is not the innate force, as existing in each organism, that 

 which has been educed by antecedent combinations and con- 

 ditions, just as much and no more external to it than are the 

 forces of the medium to each atom of a crystal ? And how 

 does this tell in the least against the analogy which has been 

 asserted, and which reaUy does exist between each chemical 

 unit and each organic unit ? Not of course that it is for a 

 moment contended that there is not, as common observation 



^ Ibid., p. 58. 



