FROM NON-LIVING TO LIVING. 



55 



so moderate as a quarter or even an eighth (two to four 

 hundred diameters) that eggs are produced spontane- 

 ously is surely, in the present state of knowledge, 

 very hazardous, if not altogether unjustifiable. Of 

 the supposed lifeless particles, by the aggregation of 

 which the eggs are said to be formed, little can be 

 learnt from observations with powers below a twelfth; 

 because higher objectives would have resolved these 

 supposed lifeless atoms into something very different, 

 and perhaps have proved, that so far from being non- 

 living particles, they were really living organisms 

 which had been living for some time, and were at the 

 time of observation at any rate far enough from the 

 inorganic. Moreover, those who have advanced this 

 theory, and those who have given in their adhesion to 

 it, have not intimated how we may ascertain when 

 the aggregation of lifeless particles assumes the 

 living condition ; and they have left us completely in 

 the dark as to what occurs when the marvellous change 

 in question takes place. What a wonderful disturb- 

 ance must occur at the instant of animation ! What a 

 violent dislocation of elements which were combined as 

 compounds, and what re-arrangement must take place 

 when the inanimate collection of molecules starts 

 into vitality ! What sort of force effects the change, 

 and whence arises the destructive force and the con- 

 structive power ? Not a word of explanation on all 

 this, and yet are we expected to accept as a fact 

 proved, the formation of spontaneous eggs ! 



