WORLD-MAKING 29 



certainly most wonderful results, and greater than those of any 

 machine man has yet been able to construct. But why " vital " ? 

 If there is no such thing as life, surely they are merely physical 

 results. Can mechanical causes produce other than physical 

 effects ? To Aristotle life was " the cause of form in organ- 

 isms." Is not this quite as likely to be true as the converse pro- 

 position ? If the vital phenomena depend on the " construction " 

 of the machine, and the " energy supplied to it," whence this 

 construction and whence this energy ? The illustration of the 

 clock does not help us to answer this question. The construc- 

 tion of the clock depends on its maker, and its energy is de- 

 rived from the hand that winds it up. If we can think of a 

 clock which no one has made, and which no one winds, a clock 

 constructed by chance, set in harmony with the universe by 

 chance, wound up periodically by chance, we shall then have 

 an idea parallel to that of an organism living, yet without any 

 vital energy or creative law ; but in such a case we should 

 certainly have to assume some antecedent cause, whether we 

 call it " horologity " or by some other name. Perhaps the term 

 evolution would serve as well as any other, were it not that 

 common sense teaches that nothing can be spontaneously 

 evolved out of that in which it did not previously exist. 



There is one other unsolved problem in the study of life by 

 the geologist to which it is still necessary to advert. This is 

 the inabihty of palaeontology to fill up the gaps in the chain of 

 being. In this respect we are constantly taunted with the im- 

 perfection of the record, a matter so important that it merits a 

 separate treatment; but facts show that this is much more 

 complete than is generally supposed. Over long periods of 

 time and many lines of being we have a nearly continuous 

 chain, and if this does not show the tendency desired, the 

 fault is as likely to be in the theory as in the record. On the 

 other hand, the abrupt and simultaneous appearance of new 

 types in many specific and generic forms and over wide and 



