136 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



I think, to be cautious in limiting his intellectual horizon. 

 If there be the least doubt in the matter, it ought to be 

 given in favor of the freedom of such a mind. To it a 

 vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the 

 possibility may never be drawn upon. It gives me pleas- 

 ure to think that the facts and reasonings of this discourse 

 tend rather toward the justification of Mr. Darwin, than 

 toward his condemnation; for they seem to show the per- 

 fect competence of matter and force, as regards divisi- 

 bility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain that 

 he has hitherto imposed upon them. 



In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination, 

 and reason combined have run back with wonderful sagac- 

 ity and success over a certain length of the line of biolog- 

 ical succession. Guided by analogy, in his "Origin of 

 Species" he placed at the root of life a primordial germ, 

 from which he conceived the amazing variety of the or- 

 ganisms now upon the earth's surface might be deduced. 

 If this hypothesis were even true, it would not be final. 

 The human mind would infallibly look behind the germ, 

 and however hopeless the attempt, would inquire into the 

 history of its genesis. In this dim twilight of conjecture 

 the searcher welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment 

 his light by indirect incidences. He studies the methods 

 of nature in the ages and the worlds within his reach, in 

 order to shape the course of speculation in antecedent ages 

 and worlds. And though the certainty possessed by ex- 

 perimental inquiry is here shut out, we are not left entirely 

 without guidance. From the examination of the solar 

 system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its 

 various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated 

 mass; that matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in 



