EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 2 $ 



directly by science that consciousness does not 

 exist in organisms without a proportionate amount 

 of molecular action ; but that is no reason for 

 confounding the one thing with the other, and 

 saying that consciousness is molecular action, a 

 statement which conveys no meaning. 



And just as consciousness is not to be confused 

 with the molecular actions associated with it in 

 organisms, so life is something else than the sum of 

 the chemical and meqhanical operations engaged in 

 its manifestation. Its phenomena are no doubt 

 mere movement in space, and therefore allied to 

 those of matter rather than to those of conscious- 

 ness, but they exhibit two closely connected char- 

 acters development and heredity, to which we 

 find nothing analogous in the inorganic world. 

 Crystallization is not analogous to development, 

 for crystallization is uniform in its intimate parts ; 

 whereas the essence of development is the sequence 

 of a definite series of forms entirely differing one 

 from another, and heredity is the transmission of 

 this remarkable property. While, then, the experi- 

 ments of Pasteur and Lister conclusively prove 

 that there is no such thing as spontaneous genera- 

 tion in the present ; the difference in character 

 between development and the laws of matter makes 

 spontaneous generation an inadequate hypothesis 



