528 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



only in degree from those exaggerated manifestations, 

 which, in virtue of their magnitude, appeal to our weak 

 powers of observation. 



Our conclusion, however, must be based, not on powers 

 that we imagine, but upon those that we possess. What do 

 they reveal? As the earth and atmosphere offer themselves 

 as the nutriment of the vegetable world, so does the latter, 

 which contains no constituent not found in inorganic 

 nature, offer itself to the animal world. Mixed with cer- 

 tain inorganic substances water, for example the vege- 

 table constitutes, in the long run, the sole sustenance of 

 the animal. Animals may be divided into two classes, the 

 first of which can utilize the vegetable world immediately, 

 having chemical forces strong enough to cope with its 

 most refractory parts; the second class use the vegetable 

 world mediately; that is to say, after its finer portions 

 have been extracted and stored up by the first. But in 

 neither class have we an atom newly created. The animal 

 world is, so to say, a distillation through the vegetable 

 world from inorganic nature. 



From this point of view all three worlds would constitute 

 a unity, in which I picture life as immanent everywhere. 

 Nor am I anxious to shut out the idea that the life here 

 spoken of may be but a subordinate part and function of 

 a Higher Life, as the living moving blood is subordinate to 

 the living man. I resist no such idea as long as it is not 

 dogmatically imposed. Left for the human mind freely 

 to operate upon, the idea has ethical vitality; but, stiffened 

 into a dogma, the inner force disappears, and the out- 

 ward yoke of a usurping hierarchy takes its place. 



The problem before us is, at all events, capable of 

 definite statement. We have on the one hand strong 

 grounds for concluding that the earth was once a molten 

 mass. We now find it not only swathed by an atmosphere, 

 and covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. 

 The question is, How were they introduced? Certainty 

 may be as unattainable here as Bishop Butler held it to be 

 in matters of religion; but in the contemplation of proba- 

 b : 'ties the thoughtful mind is forced to take a side. The 

 co^Husion of Science which recognizes unbroken causal con- 

 nection between the past and the present would undoubtedly 

 be that the molten earth contained within it elements of 

 life, which grouped themselves into their present forms us 



