104 Permanence and Evolution. 



seems to consider that the similarities between 

 organised beings have a twofold origin common 

 descent and community of component elements ; 

 and he dwells strongly and forcibly on the 

 improbability that life appeared only in one 

 form and on one favoured spot. If, as strict 

 Darwinians seem to suppose, all organised 

 creatures spring from one cell, or from a number 

 of fac-simile cells, in one small area, then that 

 is totally unlike anything else we see in nature, 

 where nothing appears to be in that way isolated. 

 Everything is a specimen of a class. He says 

 (op. cit, p. 121) : "The conclusion seems in- 

 evitable that wherever and whenever the state 

 of things permitted that peculiar combination 

 of elements known as organised substance, there 

 and then a centre was established, life had a 

 root. From roots closely resembling each other 

 in all essential characters, but all more or less 

 different,, there have been developed the various 

 stems of the great tree." 



