From Inorganic Matter to Life. 157 



them. The very conception of spontaneity is wholly 

 incongruous with the conception of evolution, .... 

 No form of evolution, inorganic or organic, can be 

 spontaneous ; but in every instance the antecedent 

 forces must be adequate in their quantities, kinds, and 

 distribution to work the observed effects. Neither 

 the alleged cases of ' spontaneous generation,' nor any 

 imaginable cases in the least allied to them fulfil this 



O 



requirement Granting that the formation of 



organic matter and the evolution of life in its lowest 

 forms may go on under existing cosmical conditions ; 

 but believing it more likely that the formation of 

 such matter and such forms, took place at a time 

 when the heat of the earth's surface was falling 

 through ranges of temperature at which higher or- 

 ganic compounds are unstable ; I conceive that the 

 moulding of such organic matter into the simplest 

 types, must have commenced with portions of pro- 

 toplasm more minute, more indefinite, and more in- 

 constant in their character than the lowest Rhizopods, 

 less distinguishable from a mere fragment of albumen 

 than even the Protogenes of Professor Haeckel. The 

 evolution of specific shapes must, like all other organic 

 evolution, have resulted from the actions and re- 

 actions between such incipient types and their en- 

 vironments, and the continued survival of those which 

 happened to have specialities best fitted to the speci- 

 alities of their environments. To reach by this process 

 the comparatively well - specialized forms of ordinary 



