129 



OHAPTEE y. 



ON THE ORIGIN OF DISEASE AND THE GERM THEORY.* 



Just as on the sea-shore the many and varied sounds of the 

 storm-tossed ocean, rolling onwards to the sandy beach, may be 

 heard as one harmonious and magnificent monotone of a wild 

 and yet moderated symphony ; just as, too, the beholder, when 

 he casts his eye upwards to the glorious dome of heaven, with 

 its fleecy white clouds and its gloomy black clouds, and its 

 myriad twinkling stars — o'er which the moon, " sweet regent of 

 the sky," reigns in paramount serenity — gathers up into one 

 grand picture this resplendent sight ; just as other worlds around 

 us play, with the earth whereon we live, mutually dependent 

 parts ; just as all things, though innumerable and infinite, yet 

 partake of union and express a uniformity in Nature — so, too, 

 do all things soever which come within the scope of human 

 cognisance lend themselves, more or less completely, to simple 

 and easily intelligible provisional modes of explanation. 



The rules and the reasonings of common sense admit of almost 

 indefinite expansion, and we find that the result of an extension 

 of the universal law that every cause must have an effect, and 

 inversely, that every effect must have had a cause, could we but 

 trace it, does, as a matter of fact, lead us to that belief in evolu- 

 tion which, having previously been recognised in every other 

 department of human inquiry, has at length also been admitted 

 to hold, even in the last strongholds of empiricism, the domains 

 held by the monsters Disease and Death. For some time it has 

 been held that the Universe, together with all its multifarious 

 contents, has gradually been developed from the simplest forms 



* By Albert Gkesswell, B.M., B.A., Christ Church, Oxford, M.R.C S. 



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