96 ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 



body of a living fly ; and then of the wealth of foliage, 

 the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between 

 this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of Califor- 

 nia, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or 

 the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound 

 shadow, and endures while nations and empires come 

 and go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to 

 the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves 

 the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or 

 have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, 

 muscle and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in 

 which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would 

 flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invisi- 

 ble animalcules mere gelatinous specks, multitudes 

 of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a 

 needle with the same ease as the angels of the School- 

 men could, in imagination. With these images before 

 your minds, you may well ask, what community of form, 

 or structure, is there between the animalcule and the 

 whale; or between the fungus and the fig-tree ? And, a 

 fortiori, between all four ? 



Finally, if we regard substance, or material composi- 

 tion, what hidden bond can connect the flower which 

 a girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses 

 through her youthful veins ; or, what is there in com- 

 mon between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, 

 or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad 

 disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating 

 through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away 

 to mere films in the hand which raises them out of their 

 element ? 



Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the 

 mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon 

 the conception of a single physical basis of life under- 



