LAUGELS PROBLEMS OP NATURE AND LIFE. 349 



there is some definite mode of action in living bodies, 

 giving to them forms and properties unknown else- 

 where in nature, and transforming known forces so as 

 to appropriate them to the peculiar functions of life, 

 we virtually admit a special and characteristic power, 

 call it what we will. The facts connected with genera- 

 tion and those of hereditary resemblance are alone 

 sufficient to point to some cause, physical it may be, 

 but not known to us by actual identity or analogy 

 with any other physical power. 



Whence but from some such cause occult to us 

 can it be that a single germ or germs, proteine cr pro- 

 toplasm (the names here signify little) should evolve by 

 gradual accretion of matter the likeness of an anterior 

 being, even in minute peculiarities of form and feature, 

 these same peculiarities, morbid as well as natural, often 

 recurring after one or two generations have been in- 

 terposed? 1 The animal economy throughout, in its 

 instincts as well as structure, enforces the same conclu- 

 sion a negative one, it may be called, but it is better 

 to rest in this than to attempt a blind and useless 

 definition. All that can be said is, that there exists 

 something we do not comprehend. The controversy 

 now going on will continue, because we possess no 

 crucial proof or argument to close it. In this it is 

 like many other questions similarly contested. 



1 This problem, if it could be solved, would carry us far deeper into 

 the arcana of creation than any other attainment of science. Mr. Darwin, 

 feeling this fully, has in his last work modestly but very ingeniously 

 encountered the question by an hypothesis, which, if unproved, and in 

 its nature incapable of proof, is at least as probable as any that can be 

 devised. His chapter, entitled Pangenesis, deserves to be studied, if but 

 to call attention to what we may term the necessities of the problem. 



