CELLS AND ORGANISATIONS 113 



another for that of birds, and another for that of fishes. 

 There is its own variation for every kind of grass or 

 tree. There is its special modification for every part of 

 the animal frame, for flesh and blood, for bones and 

 nerves. In all things that grow out of the ground, and 

 in every creature that liveth, in all flora and fauna, the 

 modifications are countless. The variability is thus most 

 extensive. Its existence is also of supreme importance, 

 for upon it depends the variety in the living world. In 

 the presence of so vast a multitude of variations, of so 

 wonderful a capacity for yielding differentiations, while 

 persistently retaining the same general form, we cannot 

 but be filled with a great admiration. If the matter had 

 depended on chance, there might not have been a single 

 variability. The least touch of variation, the feeblest 

 cause tending to produce it in cells having in them 

 adjustments so fine, might have destroyed the essential 

 form. The stability of the first form evolved might have 

 been such, that the least interference would have broken 

 it vp. Every additional variability is therefore a new 

 contingency. And the number of contingencies that the 

 cells should be capable of variability so extensive is 

 inexpressible. 



If then it be maintained that nothing but matter hath 

 being in the world, that nothing but molecules and their 

 properties have part in vital operations, we have in cells 

 a multitude of contingencies as, that these should be able 

 to combine and form a structure so extraordinary as to 

 yield life, that they should have it in them to form the 

 nucleus, the ganglion cells of the brain, and the amoebae. 

 It is a natural and eternal impossibility that chance should 

 have given the multitude of atoms necessary for develop- 

 ment into cells so numerous and so magnificent. And 

 when we add to this the power which they have of feed- 

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