THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 67 



quantity beyond, which we can only express as the 

 undiscovered residue of the infinite power and 

 divinity that lie beyond nature. Whether sciences 

 will ever go so far as to enable us to create living) 

 things, or when dead to restore them to life, we; 

 cannot tell. That these things are possible, we know, 

 and we may be certain that at some period or periods* 

 in the history of the earth living beings originated. 

 We may also be certain that when they originated 

 all the previous arrangements of inorganic nature 

 had been completed and combined to that end ; but 

 what were the details of this we have not at present 

 the means of knowing. 



If, then, we find in the little dot of protoplasm that 

 constitutes the egg of an insect the power to develop 

 itself into the parts and structures of the perfect 

 insect, and if one should find that the insect so de 

 veloped has the further power to modify itself into 

 varietal forms, we may have a vast and interesting 

 field of biological study, but we may still remain 

 ignorant of the origin of the mysterious potencies in 

 the egg, and of the creative processes, extending 

 through untold ages, and of inscrutable complexity 

 and stupendous magnitude, which were necessary to 

 render possible the existence of the egg or the insect. 

 Such is the problem presented to us by the origin 

 of life ; and it is not too much to say that our modern 

 hypotheses of development, however captivating to 

 the love of simplicity which actuates the general 



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