VIL] ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. 105 



fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears 

 almost shocking to common sense. 



What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from 

 one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the 

 various kinds of living beings ? What community of faculty can 

 there be between the brightly-coloured lichen, which so nearly 

 resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which 

 it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or 

 the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? 



Again, think of the microscopic fungus a mere infinitesimal 

 ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to mul 

 tiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly ; and then 

 of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which 

 lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of 

 California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or 

 the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and 

 endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast 

 circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world of 

 life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts 

 that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of 

 bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which 

 the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hope 

 lessly; and contrast him with the invisible animalcules mere 

 gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon 

 the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the 

 Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before 

 your minds, you may well ask, what community of form, or 

 structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale ; or 

 between the fungus and the fig-tree ? And, a fortiori, betweei.. 

 all four ? 



Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what 

 hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her 

 hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins ; or, 

 what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass 

 of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad 

 disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the 



