96 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



special zeal in this most potent birth ? Did the world of 

 life, that has advanced so far and in directions so varied, 

 that has climbed so high and broken forth in organisa- 

 tions so dazzling, did this world of life hang in the be- 

 ginning on a gossamer thread ? Is that first protoplasm, 

 which has marched steadily forward, producing at every 

 stage designs without number, and having in them 

 myriads of complex arrangements that seem the devising 

 of a God, is that first protoplasm itself the work of 

 chance and haphazard? It is not, and it cannot be. 

 The human mind indignantly rebels against all doctrines 

 of the evolution of the ordered kosmos, of the evolution 

 of a single speck of protoplasm, save as the result of the 

 working of intelligence. 



(2) In its constitution. Protoplasm is a great art struc- 

 ture. A globule of it is a machine which man cannot 

 make, which all his genius cannot put together. It is a 

 building which no human skill can raise, the stones of 

 which no hand can set in their places. The atoms and 

 molecules in it are many. Its stones are numerous as 

 those in royal palaces. Its parts are more in number 

 than in complex machines. They are minute with a 

 minuteness which defies all means of perception. They 

 are collocated and joined together in a most varied 

 manner and with exquisite precision. There are mole- 

 cular motions, heat and life motions, without number. 

 A unit is thus formed, a speck of protoplasm put together 

 and built up, and life generated. It is an exquisite 

 building, an exquisite machine, in which are a thousand 

 measurings and joinings together, in which, at every 

 minutest point, the work is the finest, the adjustments 

 the nicest, the measurings and joinings the most perfect. 

 It is a gem of architecture, a machine showing invention 

 in its glory. It is the arrangement of a system of worlds 



