PHYSICO-METAPHYSICAL 433 



and circumambient air, may be regarded as embodying in 

 himself, and his life history, an example of every form of 

 life, and the operation of every evolutionary principle 

 which has been at work in the production of individual 

 life forms, in accordance with the conditions of their 

 co-existent environment, for has his life experience not 

 been uni-cellular, multi-cellular, and voluntarily controlled 

 organic ? Besides, however, typifying ever variety of 

 preceding life forms in his own organic life changes, and 

 physical vicissitudes, he presents the culminating example 

 of a rationally controlled, responsive, and responsible 

 organism, attuned to higher, and absolutely unique, and 

 generic, or specific, ends and purposes, whereby a principle 

 has been introduced into the regulation of the direction 

 and modification of contemporary animal and vegetable 

 life, which has affected, and which no doubt will increas- 

 ingly continue to affect, its continuance and character. 

 In this light it seems, without stretching unduly the 

 scientific imagination, as if man, and his domestic pets and 

 beasts of burden, were at last, by " the survival of the 

 fittest," likely to be left in undisputed possession of terra 

 frma, with an absolutely effective suzerainty over air and 

 water. In that state, let us hope, he will be very, if not 

 completely, happy, as the " monarch of all he surveys/' 

 as the director of the globe's affairs, as well as, so far as 

 he may or can be, the determiner of its destiny ! 



The opinion is held by some that protoplasm can be 

 produced in the laboratory, and the inference drawn that 

 life can be originated de novo, with the comforting thought 

 that, if any catastrophe should annihilate life on the globe, 

 a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" would again originate 

 it, and renewed evolution would do the rest, and ultimately 

 restore the lost flora and fauna. This no doubt is an 

 example, in the scientific mind, of " the wish being father 

 to the thought." So far science has undoubtedly satisfied 

 itself that omne vivum ex vivo, and that, imitate nature's 

 productions as we may, we absolutely fail in infusing into 

 them the " principle of life," which, after the consummate 

 experiment of the production of pseudo- protoplasm, 

 ought spontaneously to vitalise its elements and initiate 

 the production and reproduction of the cell in definite 



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