EXTRACT X. 



ON BIOGENESIS IN ITS WIDEST ASPECT, AND IN 

 PARTICULAR ON ITS APPLICATION TO MAN. 



BIOGENESIS, in its widest aspect, relates to and includes 

 the past or prehuman transcendental process of the origin, 

 continuance, and transmission or evolution of life generally, 

 and therefore lies without or stretches beyond the region 

 of the immediately demonstrable, and consequently it 

 may, or must, at once be accepted in scientific faith as a 

 necessary truth, and as affording a bed-rock of solid, 

 though unrevealed, knowledge on which to erect the 

 whole structure of present and future biological science. 



The origin of life or its creation, when the condition 

 of the globe became suitable for its advent, must neces- 

 sarily be accepted as the central fact in the great chain 

 of cosmic purposive causation and effect, and as marking 

 the definite area where the inorganic and organic worlds 

 of matter meet, commingle, and separate, each to perform 

 their related but divergent roles in the evolution of the 

 cosmic vitalities and inorganic entities. 



Whatever form characterised the first of living organisms 

 it is now impossible for science exactly to say, we, there- 

 fore, tentatively content ourselves by assuming that it was 

 of the lowest order, a statement which both Revelation 

 and science mutually warrant, and that, as the conditions 

 of environment have altered, and transmitted characteristics 

 have accumulated and undergone change and modification, 

 corresponding alterations have necessarily taken place m 

 the specific and generic characters of existent life forms, 

 by which a process of continuity, increasing complexity, 



