GOD IN NATURE 195 



Still, admitting this, we are not prevented from 

 attributing something to environment and to repro 

 ductive continuity. The waters { brought forth these 

 animals of old, and it is true we cannot conceive of 

 creatures so constructed as living out of the waters. 

 The sea also furnished to them the material out of 

 which to construct their skeletons, either directly or 

 through the medium of still simpler organisms. All 

 this and much more respecting the surrounding 

 medium science can understand, though it does not 

 thereby learn the origin of these forms or the reason 

 of their complexity and variety. These do not 

 depend on the properties either of the waters or the 

 silica. 



Further, our sponge has the power of increasing 

 and multiplying to replenish the waters. It begets 

 new organisms in its own likeness, and with all its 

 own wonderful powers of unconscious construction. 

 Nay, more, we can see that in this continuous repro 

 duction it has a certain versatility, enabling it to con 

 form to circumstances, and so to present individual 

 and race characters within the species. May not, 

 then, the creative act have been limited to the pro 

 duction of the first hexactinellid, and may not the 

 others have originated by ordinary generation ? 

 Here we may admit that, for aught that we know, 

 not only varietal forms, but even some of those which, 

 as met with in successive geological formations, we 

 regard as species may have had a common origin m 



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