52 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



the same kind of materials to work upon, always pro- 

 duce precisely the same general results, and have done 

 so since the foundation of the world. Old sea-beaches 

 very similar to existing ones are in evidence, which were 

 probably laid down millions of years ago ; with the 

 impress of rain-drops and ripple-marks of the retreating 

 waves stamped indelibly upon them. Rivers flowed in 

 their beds to the sea then, just as they do now. So, too, 

 chemical combinations and crystallisations went on at 

 all ages, exactly as they do to-day, with as exactly the 

 same results. 



But when we turn to living organisms, all is changed. 

 The great groups of animals and plants, it is true, have 

 existed in past ages ; but, nevertheless, they have changed 

 in detail again and again, through the epochs of the 

 world's history ; and it is only the very latest of the 

 earth's strata which contain organisms identically the 

 same as existing ones. 



This profound difference between the results of 

 physical forces acting on inorganic bodies as distinct 

 from the effects of life, has to be accounted for. On 

 merely a priori assumptions, one would deem it probable 

 that some different or additional powers must have come 

 into play, where the results are so profoundly different.^ 



Romanes thus went beyond Darwin in tr>ing to 

 unite the physical world with the organic, as if both 

 alike depended upon Natural Selection, and as ejecting 

 " Design " from the world altogether. 



If Darwin be right that all animals and plants in the 

 past, present and future are evolved from " few " or " one " 

 original being, that being might have been a simple 

 microscopic germ for all we know. Then, when we think 



' I have here quoted from my little book entitled, The Argument of 

 Adaptation or Natural Theology Reconsidered (Williams and Norgate, is.). 



