MAN WAS WITHOUT FORM. . 341 



gestion that it is scarcely worth while to consider the details. 

 The argument against design which is suggested by con- 

 sidering the question from this point of view is so purely 

 fanciful as not to be worthy of serious discussion. 



To repeat the arguments that have been adduced again 

 and again in favour of Design would, I doubt not, weary the 

 reader and at the same time fail to convince him of the 

 truth of that hypothesis. But there is a point of view from 

 which, as I have shown, neither this doctrine nor those an- 

 tagonistic views which in our days are received with such 

 undisguised partiality, have been considered. The mode of 

 origin and growth of structure has for the most part been 

 ignored or strangely misrepresented by some of those who 

 have committed themselves to physical life theories. The 

 consideration of the formless matter out of which structure 

 is evolved, would seem to have formed the point from which 

 the speculator on causation would naturally desire to set out, 

 but the subject is invariably considered from a very different 

 stand-point ; and instead of beginning the discussion con- 

 cerning the nature of man when he was a formless mass of 

 bioplasm, we are always directed to begin our study of 

 living things and their organs when they have attained their 

 fully formed state. Writers seem to forget that man like 

 every other living thing was at one time without form and 

 destitute of structure, and many argue as if structurelessness 

 was evidence of degradation ; whereas it is a fact that the 

 highest living forms as well as the lowest are at one time 

 equally structureless ; nor are there any characters known 

 by which the highest, structurelessness can be distinguished 

 from the lowest. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer in a paper published only in 



