115 



aubsisting between the different forms, the facility of their conver- 

 sions from one state to another, we have before been reminded of, 

 and shall hereafter more fully apprehend, when our business is to 

 speak of the maintenance o/ life and the manner of assimilation. 



38. Thus then we have faintly sketched, we may perhaps say, 

 the probable modes of spiritual formation. There are involved in 

 the sketch many objections of a minor sort, which I have not 

 thought proper to notice; and, on the other hand, many collateral 

 circumstances of equal force may be adduced in support of these 

 views. Among the objections which might be urged I shall notice 

 only this one, viz. if man was once formed in this spontaneous way, 

 merely by a train of causation (wrought, it must be remembered, in 

 an infinity of ages) and by a concurrence of elements, how comes it 

 that we have now no examples of such an origin? 



39. To this objection, the force of which is not very great, it 

 may be answered, generally, that all the parts of the universe are in 

 action, undergoing perpetually changes among themselves, changes 

 of combinations resulting from the particular states of causes, fixing 

 particular and present relations; that therefore we are not to expect 

 at this period, or at this stage of change, the same results as occurred 

 perhaps at times incalculably remote. This remark is sanctioned 

 by experience as well as induction. History has preserved many 

 solitary facts in almost every department of * creation; facts which 

 have occurred at one period of causation, effects for which there has 

 been since no relation prepared, no concurrence to give them birth. 

 But I propose to treat the objection a little more respectfully. 



40. Supposing the inference, that the complicated have arisen 

 from the simple forms of life, to be correct ; to descend a little more 

 particularly into the subject, the question is, how it happens, seeing 

 that the first and simple forms of life are now produced from their 

 elements, that they do not in time become converted into the com- 

 plicated forms, thus extending our experience of origin by constitu- 

 tion? This question is replied to in a general way above, and now 

 more particularly as follows: 1st, The state of the elements of life 

 (their relations, &c.) existing in their sources is necessarily very differ- 

 ent, before these elements have been disturbed, before they have 

 established the complicated forms, from the condition of them when 

 their processes have been vastly interchanged, and when, finally, all 

 the effects of their causation are accomplished. 2nd, The conver- 

 sion of the simple into the complicated forms is shewn to be de- 

 pendent upon the condition of the elements. 3rd, There being now 

 no examples of the spontaneous origin of the complicated forms of 

 life, indicates only, agreeably to the argument, that the series of 

 causation which produced these forms has long since been at an 

 end, and that the aggregate condition of life, being now different 

 from its primordial condition, is established in other relations, is 

 governed by another causation, which, among its other results, has 

 prepared the means of identical perpetuity rather than of further 

 change. Consistently with this last observation (which is indeed a 



