204 LIFE ON THE EARTH. 



GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 



These various speculations on the subject of 

 Fossil plants and animals, and the origin and pro- 

 gress of life, may perhaps, to the student of exact 

 science, appear little more than the chase of a phan- 

 tom, a wandering after unattainable truth. There is, 

 however, something seductive in the problem of the 

 origin of life, and one who has entered on this 

 charmed path, will seldom leave it without reluctance. 

 Vain and ill-judged as are some of these attempts, 

 they ought perhaps not to be visited with the heavy 

 condemnation which sometimes has been heaped 

 upon them. Men may have mistaken views about 

 the diluvial catastrophe ; false conceptions regarding 

 electricity as the agent of imparting life ; wrong notions 

 about the nature of atoms, and yet not reason, at 

 least intentionally, as ' atheists', denying the incessant 

 watchfulness of God over the arrangements which he 

 has appointed. It is hard to believe this of any 

 serious thinker, even of Lucretius, however strongly 

 he may contend for the regular operation of natural 

 laws, in opposition to the capricious meddling of 

 those monstrous personifications of human passions, 



the Darwinian hypothesis, not less searching than that formerly 

 directed by the same hand into the doctrine contained in the 

 work entitled Vestiges of Creation, and with the same result, a 

 decided rejection of the hypothesis. 



