UNLIKENESS IN ORGANISMS. 159 



arranging themselves into a special form. Well, that 

 is substantially what we mean by a co-ordinating power 

 behind the movements of germinal matter ! Any man 

 who will attend to definitions may easily ascertain 

 that the power Herbert Spencer calls organic polarity 

 must be, at the last analysis, substantially the same 

 in effect as life, defined as the power which co-ordi- 

 nates the movements of germinal matter. Come out 

 upon this sheet of ice to the central currents, and 

 you will find Herbert Spencer just as shy in the 

 range of physiology, as Stuart Mill was in the range 

 of metaphysics, of putting his foot on that central 

 ice. The trouble is that some of you have wan- 

 dered with Herbert Spencer only up and down the 

 shores, looking at the bank-swallows' nests there full 

 of snow. 



Herbert Spencer himself more than hints that life 

 must go before organization, although in spirit his 

 theory has little regard for that truth. " It may 

 be argued, that, on the hypothesis of evolution, life 

 necessarily comes before organization. On this hy- 

 pothesis, organic matter in a state of homogeneous 

 aggregation must precede organic matter in a state 

 of heterogeneous aggregation. But, since the passing 

 from a structureless state to a structured state is 

 itself a vital process, it follows that vital activity 

 must have existed while there was yet no structure : 

 structure could not else arise." (Biology, American 

 edition, p. 167.) 



The cause must go before the effect. Structured 

 matter is structured by a cause. That cause goes 



