ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 91 



What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from 

 one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the 

 various kinds of living beings ? What community of faculty 

 can there be between the brightly-coloured lichen, which so 

 nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare 

 rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct 

 with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? 



Again, think of the microscopic fungus — a mere infinitesi- 

 mal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough 

 to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living 

 fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of 

 flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a 

 plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the 

 dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which 

 covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while 

 nations and empires come and go around its vast circumfer- 

 ence. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, 

 picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of 

 beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety 

 feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among 

 waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard 

 would flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invis- 

 ible animalcules — mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of 

 which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with 

 the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in 

 imagination. With these images before your minds, you 

 may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is 

 there between the animalcule and the whale; or between the 

 fungus and the fig-tree? And, d fortiori, between all four? 



Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, 

 what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears 

 in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful 

 veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and 



