UNEXPLAINED ORIGINS. 41 
act of this Power Without could endow living substance 
with feeling and consciousness. No one can here any 
longer appeal to that undefined chemico-electric action by 
which some attempt to account for protoplasm. Mr. 
Wallace says: “Here all idea of mere complication of 
structure producing the result is out of the question. We 
feel it to be altogether preposterous to assume that at a 
certain stage of complexity of atomic constitution, and 
as a necessary result of that complexity alone, an ego 
should start into existence,—a thing that feels, that is 
conscious of its own existence. Here we have the cer- 
tainty that something new has arisen,—a being whose 
nascent consciousness has gone on increasing in power 
and definiteness till it has culminated in the higher ani- 
mals. No verbal explanation or attempt at explanation 
—such as the statement that life is ‘the result of the 
molecular forces of the protoplasm,’ or that the whole 
existing organic universe from the amoeba up to man was 
latent in the fire-mist from which the solar system was 
developed—can afford any mental satisfaction, or help us 
in any way to a solution of the mystery.” 
2. Whence the backbone? All animals are divided 
into vertebrates and invertebrates, the animals with a 
backbone and animals without. Between these two 
groups the barrier of backbone stands impassable till it is 
explained how a butterfly could become a bird, or a snail 
a serpent, or a star fish acquire the skeleton of the shark. 
These two groups, the vertebrate animals and the inver- 
tebrate, must be regarded as fundamentally distinct. 
3. Whence the breast? Vertebrates are either 
mammals or submammals. The breastless tribes are 
birds, reptiles, and fishes. These are far beneath in the 
scale, while the mammal, by its peculiar endowment in 
that it gives suck to its young, stands elect, aloft, and 
apart. Till it is shown how an animal that never got 
