MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE. 285 



gelatinous globules,* or threads,! in which no 

 distinct organs, interior or exterior, can be dis- 

 covered. These, it is clear, cannot be considered 

 as indicating an indefinite progression of animal 

 life in a descending scale of minuteness. We 

 can, mathematically speaking, conceive one of 

 these animals as perfect and complicated in its 

 structure as an elephant or an eagle, but we do 

 not find it so in nature. It appears, on the con- 

 trary, in these objects, as if we were, at a certain 

 point of magnitude, reaching the boundaries of 

 the animal w r orld. We need not here consider 

 the hypothesis and opinions to which these am- 

 biguous objects have given rise ; but without any 

 theory, they tend to show that the subordination 

 of organic life is finite on the side of the little as 

 well as of the great. 



Some persons might, perhaps, imagine that a 

 ground for believing the smallness of organized 

 beings to be limited, might be found in what we 

 know of the constitution of matter. If solids and 

 fluids consist of particles of a definite, though 

 exceeding smallness, which cannot further be 

 divided or diminished, it is manifest that we 

 have, in the smallness of these particles, a limit 

 to the possible size of the vessels and organs of 

 animals. The fluids which are secreted, and 

 which circulate in the body of a mite, must 

 needs consist of a vast number of particles, or 



* Volvox. f Vibrio. MUller. Cuvier. 



