108 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



individuation. All this seems to follow naturally from 

 the mutability of new-born living matter on the one 

 hand, and that conservative tendency (due to Heredity) 

 which increases with complexity of organization. Mu- 

 tability being the essential quality of living matter, as 

 such, it would seem almost impossible for us to believe 

 that whilst some of the lowest organisms, such as 

 Moulds and Amoebae, developed into forms continually 

 higher and higher, others should, in spite of their 

 intrinsic mutability (which present observation shows 

 to be retained), persistently preserve the same almost 

 primordial simplicity as their ancestors possessed in an 

 incalculably remote past. That some Moulds, Amoebae, 

 and other lowest organisms should have lived in un- 

 broken continuity through pre-Silurian epochs, amidst 

 all the changes of the Carboniferous, Triassic, Oolitic, 

 Cretaceous, and more recent geologic ages, with that 

 mutability as an essential characteristic which they are 

 now seen to display, and yet that they should have 

 undergone little or no alteration, seems to me almost 

 too incredible to be seriously entertained. 



But what view can be substituted which will offer 

 a more consistent explanation of the facts ? 



2. Theory of Arckebtosis^ Heterogenests^ and Homo gene sis. 



Guided by the results of experimental evidence, we 

 are entitled to believe that ' living' matter can and 

 does continually come into existence, owing to the 

 synthesis and gradual elaboration of not-living mate- 



