no PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



recognisable by their effects ; and as Croll said are just 

 as worthy of the term " Vital Force " or " Vital Energy " 

 or any other like expression, as are Gravitation, Electricity 

 and Magnetism are of their special names. 



Now let us see if Huxley can help us. He says : " A 

 sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the 

 properties of the molecules of that [cosmic] vapour, have 

 predicted, say the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much 

 certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour 

 of the breath in a cold winter's day.^ 



" Were it given to me to look beyond the abyss of 

 geologically recorded time to the still more remote 

 period when the earth was passing through physical and 

 chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than 

 a man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a 

 witness of the Evolution of living protoplasm from non- 

 living matter." ^ 



The reader will here note that he derives nothing of 

 any scientific value from this utterance any more than 

 from Tyndall's. The "man in the street" asks iox facts, 

 and they both supply him with imaginations. 



It naturally occurs to one, Why is it necessary to go 

 back to so early a period for life ? We still have both 

 degrees of heat and cold beyond which no living being 

 can exist ; we know the external conditions of air, light, 

 moisture and food which are necessary for plant and 

 animal life ; why then cannot a living being arise now, or 

 at any time along the evolutionary history of the world ? 



A very obvious answer appears to be that once ivas 

 enough. Given the tiniest speck of living protoplasm 

 with its nucleus, and all the living world can have come 

 out of it. 



^ Gencaloff}' of Animals. 

 "^Critiques and Addresses, p. 239. 



