PRIMITIVE MAN. S23 



physical basis of life, and arbitrarily assigning to 

 tbis substance properties now divided between or- 

 ganised and unorganised, and between dead and 

 living matter, find no difficulty in deducing all plants 

 and animals from it. Still, even this cannot have 

 been the ultimate material. It must have been 

 evolved from something. We are thus brought 

 back to certain molecules of star-dust, or certain 

 conflicting forces, which must have had self-exist- 

 ence, and must have potentially included all subse- 

 quent creatures. Otherwise, if with Spencer wo 

 hold that God is "unknowable,^' and creation "un- 

 thinkable,'' we are left suspended on nothing over 

 a bottomless void, and must adopt as the initial 

 proposition of our philosophy, that all things were 

 made out of nothing, and by nothing; unless we 

 prefer to doubt whether anything exists, and to 

 push the doctrine of relativity to the unscientific 

 extreme of believing that we can study the relations 

 of things non-existent or unknown. So we must 

 allow the evolutionist some small capital to start 

 with; observing, however, that self -existent matter 

 in a state of endless evolution is something of which 

 we cannot possibly have any definite conception. 



Being granted thus much, the evolutionist next 

 proceeds to demand that we shall also believe in the 

 indefinite variability of material things, and shall set 

 aside all idea that there is any difference in kind 

 between the different substances which we know. 

 They must all be mutually convertible, or at least 



