MR. HERBERT SPENCER. 333 



modification may in time be generated. That surprise 

 which they feel on finding one whom they last saw as a 

 boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the 

 degree of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant 

 instances are at hand of the mode in which we may 

 pass to the most diverse forms by insensible grada- 

 tions." 



Nothing can be more satisfactory and straightforward. 

 I will make one more quotation from this excellent 

 article : 



" But the blindness of those who think it absurd to 

 suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen 

 by successive modifications out of simple ones, becomes 

 astonishing when we remember that complex organic 

 forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs 

 from a seed immeasurably in every respect in bulk, 

 in structure, in colour, in form, in specific gravity, in 

 chemical composition differs so greatly that no visible 

 resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between 

 them. Yet is the one changed in the course of a few 

 years into the other changed so gradually that at no 

 moment can it be said, ' Now the seed ceases to be, and 

 the tree exists.' What can be more widely contrasted 

 than a newly-born child, and the small, semi-transparent 

 gelatinous spherule constituting the human ovum? 

 The infant is so complex in structure that a cyclopaedia 

 is needed to describe its constituent parts. The 

 germinal vesicle is so simple, that a line will contain 

 all that can be said of it. Nevertheless, a few months 

 suffices to develop the one out of the other, and that 

 too by a series of modifications so small, that were the 



