I PROLOGUE 45 



vidual development. Therefore, it is a probable 

 conclusion that, if we could follow living beings 

 back to their earlier states, we should find them 

 to present forms similar to those of the individual 

 germ, or, what comes to the same thing, of those 

 lowest known organisms which stand upon the 

 boundary line between plants and animals. At 

 present, our knowledge of the ancient living world 

 stops very far short of this point. 



3. It is generally agreed, and there is certainly 

 no evidence to the contrary, that all plants are 

 devoid of consciousness ; that they neither feel, 

 desire, nor think. It is conceivable that the 

 evolution of the primordial living substance should 

 have taken place only along the plant line. In 

 that case, the result might have been a wealth of 

 vegetable life, as great, perhaps as varied, as at 

 present, though certainly widely different from the 

 present flora, in the evolution of which animals 

 have played so great a part. But the living world 

 thus constituted would be simply an admirable 

 piece of unconscious machinery, the working out of 

 which lay potentially in its primitive composition ; 

 pleasure and pain would have no place in it ; it 

 would be a veritable Garden of Eden without any 

 tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The 

 question of the moral government of such a world 

 could no more be asked, than we could reasonably 

 seek for a moral purpose in a kaleidoscope. 



4. How far down the scale of animal life the 



