292 BREATHING OF LIFE 



sort of God, and in the occurrence of at least one miracle, 

 while the other attributes everything in nature to the opera- 

 tion of physics. In the system of the one, mind, spirit 

 supernatural agency of some kind, and in some degree, may 

 have place and power. In the other there is nothing but 

 perfectly blind nature. 



The changes in bioplasm have been little considered by 

 our great naturalist, who, as far as I know, has never yet 

 expressed any opinion concerning the nature of the forces 

 at work in the one or more primordial forms from which 

 every living thing, according to his belief, has sprung. Nor 

 has he described the constitution of the actual matter which 

 is the seat of the slight changes to which he refers, and 

 which result in modifications in external and internal struc- 

 ture. Nor does he tell us in what particular respects the 

 primordial forms, supposing there were several, differed 

 from one another. He does not even explain what he 

 means by life having been '''breathed' 1 ' 1 by the Creator into 

 the one form, which he thinks he should infer from analogy 

 was probably the first organic thing that lived upon this 

 earth. What right have we to infer that many forms of 

 living matter now existing could have been distinguished 

 from that first form that somehow sprang, as our theory is, 

 at once from the inorganic? If the Creator " breathed" 

 life into that, why are we to suppose that that one breath 

 was all, and that from that instant He ceased to breathe 

 life, and ceased to influence the life He had breathed, nay, 

 that He then ceased to be : all subsequent changes having 

 been effected by the working of secondary laws, instead of 

 being due to the direct and continued life-breathing power 

 of an omnipotent, eternal, unchanging God. 



