ii2 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



with ease and profusion over the fields and mountains of 

 the earth, and in the depths of the sea. Building is 

 going on incessantly. Molecular life machines are ever 

 forming. Webs of them are constantly weaving. Their 

 power of work is superb; they know no weariness, no 

 hardness in their toil, no need of rest. Their genius 

 for building is supreme. Laying hold of all suitable 

 materials, they throw them into their own form. They 

 collocate them. They make them stand in right relations. 

 Every molecule is obedient to their call ; every molecule 

 at their touch springs into the position required of it, and 

 in that position performs the functions thereof. The 

 places are many; the molecules and functions many. 

 The work is great, its nicety exquisite. Its difficulty in 

 itself is enormous. In short, all the operations are 

 skilled in the highest degree, and yet are performed as 

 by a master hand. The invention of cells was a triumph 

 of thought. The invention of a machine to make them 

 would have been, if possible, a still greater triumph. 

 But it is the ideal of invention, that they are so con- 

 stituted as to be themselves capable of producing their 

 kind. Every cell made becomes also a maker. It can 

 not only fill its own place in an organisation and do its 

 own work, it can provide for another place an instrument 

 for its work. There are in it arrangements which, 

 though no doubt simple, must yet be most ingenious, 

 by which at every point it is enabled to receive suitable 

 materials, and bring them into its own form ; and so that, 

 when suitably increased, forces are called into play 

 through which a division takes place, which leaves two 

 as perfect as was the one. 



(3) Cells are capable of innumerable modifications and 

 variations. There is one cell for grass, another for trees, 

 another for fruits. There is one for the flesh of beasts, 



