7 "Scientific Levity'' 



.well as with the preceding passage from the 

 "Vestiges," it is instructive to compare the 

 carefully constructed sentences so reticent, so 

 politic of Mr. Herbert Spencer : 



" The chasm," he tells us, " between the in- 

 organic and the organic is being filled up. On 

 the one hand, some four or five thousand com- 

 pounds, once regarded as exclusively organic, 

 have now been produced artificially from inor- 

 ganic matter ; and chemists do not doubt their 

 ability so to produce the highest forms of 

 organic matter. On the other hand, the micro- 

 scope has traced down organisms to simpler 

 and simpler forms, until in the Protogenes of 

 Professor Haeckel, there has been reached a 

 type distinguishable from a fragment of albu- 

 men only by its finely granular character." 1 



On which Dr. Elam pertinently asks, " Does 

 not every candid observer know that this said 

 ' chasm ' is not in any way ' being filled up ; ' 

 and that the chemist could quite as easily con- 

 struct a full-grown ostrich, as this despised bit 

 of finely granulated albumen ? " As for the 

 " four or five thousand compounds," as well 

 might the goldsmith say that he did not 

 " doubt his ability " to make gold out of a 



1 " Principles of Psychology " (Stereotyped Edition), 

 voL i. p. 137. 



