72 Chemical Affinities. 



carp, sarcocarp, and epicarp, etc., etc. ; or, again, from the 

 collar to the downward root and the upward stem, and to all 

 the tissues comprising woody fibre, spiral and cellular 

 tissue, etc., etc. ? 



This is a perversion of the meaning of law. Law retains 

 order it does not create ; the law of Precursion sustains 

 in their original integrity the order of successive changes, 

 and that morphology which was stamped upon the molecular 

 arrangements imprinted upon each particular kind of seed 

 or germ by the Creator ; so that, if a particular imprint 

 were stamped upon a given germ, it would go on moving 

 in that order of succession which would bring the individual 

 parts and combinations, peculiar to the parent from which 

 it sprang, back again to the germinal condition whence it 

 started. The law of Precursion only tends to keep and 

 preserve in a uniform and constant manner the form of 

 growth imprinted first upon the germ from whence the 

 parent sprang ; and it is the office of this law to preserve 

 this succession in the same plants, trees, shrubs, etc., etc., 

 from year to year, and, as it were, to secure in constant 

 action their genesis, first set light to by the expression of 

 Will in the Creator. 



Precursion does not retain the centres of ossification in 

 distinct segments in the fishes of the sea, and so permit 

 of a long season of progressive enlargement in all parts of 

 the frame of the finny tribes of the deep ; neither can the 

 same law determine the early and rapid welding together or 

 connation of the ossific centres of the feathered tenants of 

 the air. These, and a thousand yea, and thousands upon 

 thousands of minute details resolve themselves into the 

 archetypal plan of the primitive germ imprinted upon every 

 organic product it has pleased the Creator to make. 



So the planets in their orbits move in an ideal inclined 

 plane, which is bisected at the centre of the extremes of 



