Evolution. 49 



aeons across which life has crept towards its 

 present outcome, his vision would ultimately 

 reach a point when the progenitors of this 

 assembly could not be called human." 1 " No 

 one indeed doubts now that all the higher types 

 of life with which the earth teems have been- 

 developed by the patient process of evolution 

 from lower organisms, and in logical consis- 

 tency we are bound to trace back the series 

 to the simplest forms of protoplasm, which the 

 microscope reveals to us as living units. But 

 all this is but the outcome of life from life, and 

 leaves us without an approach to a solution of 

 the mighty question of the origin of life. There 

 was a time when the earth was a red-hot melted 

 globe, on which no life could exist. In course 

 of ages its surface cooled ; but, to quote the 

 words of one of our greatest savans, 'when it 

 first became fit for life there was no living thing 

 upon it.' How then are we to conceive the 

 origination of organized creatures ? " 3 



Professor Huxley, propounding to the British 

 Association 3 the tenets of what he called his 



1 " Science and Man." Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii. 

 p. 611. 



* "The Germ Theory and Spontaneous Generation." 

 Contemporary Review, vol. xxix. pp. 901, 902. 



3 In the Presidential Address for 1870. 



