The Origin of Organic Forms. 1 99 



if this supposition be maintained as legitimate and 

 necessary, we may fairly challenge the evolutionist 

 to point out the diversity in the environing forces 

 which causes the diversity in the cell-growth. No 

 relation, either qualitative or quantitative, is discover- 

 able. The cause is wholly unknown. 



What, we may ask, is the scientific worth of a 

 theory that tells us to look to the incident forces of 

 the environment for the cause of certain changes, 

 and cannot give us the faintest clue to the precise 

 mode of force in the environment to which the effects 

 under examination are due ? Is this science, or is it 

 not rather the merest ghost and shadow of science ? 

 Look again at these living germs. One remains 

 destitute of any trace of organization, a second 

 developes the simplest structure, a third grows into 

 a highly developed organism. They are, at the out- 

 set, indistinguishable in chemical composition ; their 

 molecular constitution, so far as known, is the same; 

 yet they evolve into the most widely separate struc- 

 tures. If we go back through successive countless 

 generations till we reach the ancestral germs, indistin- 

 guishable in their composition or constitution and 

 with the same cosmic and terrestrial surroundings, 

 we are entitled to ask by what causes these germs 

 have passed to such opposite destinies. What dy- 

 namic law accounts for their movement onward to 

 that point which they severally reach ? Mr. Spencer 

 replies: The law of the continuous redistribution of 



