MODERN EVOLUTION. 



217 



dall's creed as to the fundamental unity of the vital 

 and the non-vital. 



" Looking back through the prodigious vista of 

 the past, I find no record of the commencement of 

 life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of 

 forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions 

 of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of 

 the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong 

 foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted ab- 

 sence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the 

 mode in which the existing forms of life- have origi- 

 nated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But 

 expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if 

 it were given to me to look beyond the abyss of 

 geologically recorded time to the still more remote 

 period when the earth was passing through physical 

 and chemical conditions which it can no more see 

 again than a man can recall his infancy, I should 

 expect to be a witness of the evolution of living 

 protoplasm from non-living matter. I should expect 

 to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, 

 endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of de- 

 termining the formation of new protoplasm from 

 such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates, and 

 tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, 

 without the aid of light. That is the expectation to 

 which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you 

 once more to recollect that I have no right to call 

 my opinion anything but an act of philosophical 

 faith." 



15 



