294 



ALTERATION IN VITAL POWER. 



matter? The changes in form and structure which are 

 referred to natural selection, in truth, affect not structure 

 that is already formed, but the living bioplasm which is 

 about to form structure, and it is curious that naturalists 

 should aver with such tenacity that Darwin has really dis- 

 covered a physical explanation for the formation of species, 

 although the phenomena of the matter which is the seat of 

 the change cannot be explained by physics. 



But everyone who does not unreservedly accept the 

 physico-evolutional hypothesis is credited with the accept- 

 ance of the doctrine, that each different species was the 

 work of a separate act of creation ; as if the refusal to accept 

 one untenable dogma necessarily forced upon the objector 

 the acceptance of some other equally unproven. 



Alteration in Vital Power. It is remarkable and quite 

 inexplicable by any physical theory, that the results of the 

 act of living in different masses of bioplasm having the 

 same origin, should be very different. Thus, in the de- 

 velopment of new centres one within the other, the masses 

 last produced seem somehow to have acquired formative 

 power which the bioplasm preceding them did not possess. 

 For the acquisition of new power time is certainly required, 

 for if the development of new centres occurs more quickly 

 than usual, the bioplasm that is formed is defective in 

 formative power, neither does that which is produced from 

 it re-acquire powers that have been lost. The new powers 

 emanate from the very centre of the particle of living matter. 

 In the formation of the ovum itself the production of new 

 centre ivithin new centre goes on for a long time before the 

 actual mass from which the new being is to be evolved is 

 produced. Millions of masses of bioplasm are formed 



