THE ORIGIN OF MICROBES 105 



and the operation of this law, it will be at once 

 apparent that there must be error somewhere in the 

 matter. ' If the law of actual variation/ says Dr. 

 Dallinger, ' with all that is involved in the survival of 

 the fittest, could be so readily brought into complete 

 operation, and yield so pronounced a result, where 

 would be the stability of the organic world ? Nothing 

 would be at one stay. There could be no perman- 

 ence in anything living. The philosophy of modern 

 biology is that the most complex forms of living 

 creatures have derived their splendid complexity 

 and adaptations from the slow and majestically 

 progressive variation and survival from the simpler 

 and the simplest forms. If, then, the simplest forms 

 of the present and the past were not governed by 

 accurate and unchanging laws of life, how did the 

 rigid certainties that manifestly and admittedly 

 govern the more complex and the most complex 

 come into play ? If our modern philosophy of 

 biology be, as we know it is, true, then it must be 

 very strong evidence indeed that would lead us to 

 conclude that the laws seen to be universal break 

 down and cease accurately to operate, where the 

 objects become microscopic, and our knowledge of 

 them is by no means full, exhaustive, and clear. 

 Moreover, looked at in the abstract, it is a little 

 difficult to conceive why there should be more 

 uncertainty about the life-processes of a group of 

 lowly living things, than there should be about the 

 behaviour, in reaction, of a given group of molecules. 

 The triumph of modern knowledge is a knowledge 

 which nothing can shake that Nature's processes 



