764 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. [CHAP. 



being first spherical, and then by mutual compression 

 dodecahedral, then all cells should have similar forms. In 

 the Foraminifera and some other lowly organisms, we seem 

 to observe the production of complex forms on geometrical 

 principles. But from similar causes acting according to 

 similar laws only similar results could be produced. If 

 the original life-germ of each creature is a simple particle 

 of protoplasm, unendowed with any distinctive forces, then 

 the whole of the complex phenomena of animal and vege- 

 table life are effects without causes. Protoplasm may be 

 chemically the same substance, and the germ- cell of a man 

 and of a fish may be apparently the same, so far as the 

 microscope can decide ; but if certain cells produce men, 

 and others as uniformly produce a species of fish, there 

 must be a hidden constitution determining the extremely 

 different results. If this were not so, the generation of 

 every living creature from the uniform germ would have 

 to be regarded as a distinct act of creation. 



Theologians have dreaded the establishment of the 

 theories of Darwin and Huxley and Spencer, as if they 

 thought that those theories could explain everything upon 

 the purest mechanical and material principles, and exclude 

 all notions of design. They do not see that those theories 

 have opened up more questions than they have closed. 

 The doctrine of evolution gives a complete explanation of 

 no single living form. While showing the general prin- 

 ciples which prevail in the variation of living creatures, it 

 only points out the infinite complexity of the causes and 

 circumstances which have led to the present state of things. 

 Any one of Mr. Darwin's books, admirable though they all 

 are, consists but in the setting forth of a multitude of 

 indeterminate problems. He proves in the most beautiful 

 manner that each flower of an orchid is adapted to some 

 insect which frequents and fertilises it, and these adapta- 

 tions are but a few cases of those immensely numerous ones 

 which have occurred in the lives of plants and animals. 

 But why orchids should have been formed so differently 

 from other plants, why anything, indeed, should be as it is, 

 rather than in some of the other infinitely numerous possible 

 modes of existence, he can never show. The origin of every- 

 thing that exists is wrapped up in the past history of the 

 universe. At some one or more points in past time there 



