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train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the 

 highest and most recent are, then, to be regarded as a series of ad- 

 vances of the principle of development, which have depended up- 

 on external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals 

 are appropriate." The nucleated vesicle* is the fundamental form 

 of all organization. The first step in the creation of life upon this 

 plant was a chemico-electric operation, by which simple germinal 

 vesicles were produced. The first step being taken, an advance 

 was made under favor of peculiar circumstances or conditions, 

 from the simplest forms of being to the next more complicated, 

 and this through the medium of the ordinary process of generation j" 

 that is, if we understand the author, any individual of a species, 

 may, or all simultaneously under peculiar conditions, generate a 

 species a step higher in the scale than themselves, or in other 

 words, create a being — for certainly it is a creation. At the first 

 view, such an idea bears the aspect of impiety — but the author 

 softens very materially this construction in preserving the agency 

 of Deity by the instrumentality of law, through which, the creation 

 proceeds — a law, emanating from the great Architect of worlds. 



The author, by this law, avoids the common notion of creation, 

 which seem to suppose that in every creative act there has been 

 an immediate instrumentality of Deity, like that of man, in his 

 works. We do not charge impiety upon the author in this hy- 

 pothesis. If, however, other readers know more of creative 

 power, or of the modes by which species have been created, or 

 of the reason why they have appeared successively upon the earth, 

 by this hypothesis, they are more highly favored than ourselves. 



Anatomical considerations militate against the law of develop- 

 ment proposed by the author. In the calculating machine which 

 changes its law after the 100,000,001, there is a special construc- 

 tion and adjustment of the machine by which the law is changed, 

 I at this stage of its action, and these special parts of the machine, 

 ' whereby the law is changed, may be seen within it; it is a part 

 ^ of the original workmanship. But no provision can be discovered 

 I in the human machine for changing the law of production and 

 generation. 



If the calculating machine, by its owm mechanism, can gene- 

 rate the special apparatus for changing its law, then we might infer 



• A vescicle containing granules of matter, which are successively advanced in 

 their turn to vessels also. 



