XVII 



MYSTERY OF THE CELL 351 



The whole vast series of species of plants and 

 animals, with all their diversities of form and structure, 

 began at the very dawn of life upon the cooling earth 

 with a single cell (or with myriads of cells) such as those 

 whose structure and properties we have here been con- 

 sidering ; and every single individual of the myriads of 

 millions which have ever lived upon the earth have each 

 begun to be developed from a similar but not identical cell ; 

 and all the possibilities of all their organs, and structures, 

 and secretions, and organic products have arisen out of such 

 cells ; and we are asked to believe that these cells and all 

 their marvellous outcome are the result of the fortuitous 

 clash of atoms with the help of " an unconscious cell-soul of 

 the most primitive and rudimentary kind " ! 



T//e Fallacy of Eternity as an Explanation of Evolution 



It may perhaps not be out of place here to deal with 

 what seems to me to be one of the common philosophical 

 fallacies of the present day, the idea that you can get over 

 the difficulty of requiring any supreme mind, any author of 

 the cosmos, by assuming that it had no beginning — that it 

 has existed, with all its forces, energies, and laws, from all 

 eternity, and that it will continue to exist for all eternity. 



I have already quoted Haeckel and some others on this 

 point. I will now give a similar statement by two writers 

 of to-day. Dr. Saleeby in an article on The Life of the 

 Universe, in The Academy (March 25, 1905), after discussing 

 the theory of dissipation of energy, the infinity of the 

 universe, the littleness of man, and other matters, with his 

 usual clearness and vigour, concludes with this sentence : 

 " Radium-clocks have been made that will go for a million 

 years ; but I believe that the Universe was never made and 

 will go on for ever." This, of course, is vague, because, if the 

 term " universe " is taken to mean " the all that exists," or 

 rather, " all that exists, that ever has existed, or that ever 

 will exist," it is a truism, because that includes all life and 

 God. But " universe " is taken by Haeckel and his school 

 to mean the material universe, and to definitely exclude 

 spirit and God. 



A great modern physicist, Professor Svante Arrhenius, 



