The Origin of Organic Forms. 207 



immensely complicated question that any thinker 

 will regard it as a hopeless one. Evolutionism is, 

 challenged because, in the individual instance no less 

 than in the inmeasurable aggregate of organic life, 

 it attempts to solve the problem on principles which 

 are demonstrably defective. No single pulsation in 

 the circulatory system, has been, or can be, explained, 

 if the solution be rigorously limited to dynamic prin- 

 ciples, and every other cause excluded. Life in its 

 simplest manifestations, in its least intricate activities, 

 cannot be reduced to molar and molecular motions ; 

 which, if we had a complete knowledge of them, 

 might be written out in the formula of mathematical 

 physics. It is here that the antagonists who take 

 firm hold of each other must join issue. The simplest 

 obtainable instances should form the subject of experi- 

 ment and illustration : let it be fairly discussed by 

 the experts whether there be any vital activity, the 

 phenomena of which can be fully exhausted by a 

 knowledge of dynamic law, and if it can be proved 

 that a dynamic principle accounts for the whole, then 

 we shall admit that the evolution philosophy has a 

 strong presumption in its favour. But we are con- 

 vinced that no such conclusion is possible. There 

 are causes, or a Cause, working, in the whole realm 

 of organic nature notably in sensation and the 

 phenomena of intelligence directing and controlling 

 all things, which may not be confounded with that 

 force whose law the physicist expounds. That which 



