150 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



generated. Protoplasm straightway began to act after its 

 manner, to take in and grow, to divide and multiply. 

 Amoebae, though mere specks of this form of structure, 

 claimed an independent existence, and showed them- 

 selves capable of performing certain of the functions of 

 life. A great advance was made when a nucleus was 

 evolved and cells formed. Cells learned to multiply, 

 vary, and build up organisations. Organisations scored 

 a triumph when they developed the power of producing 

 seeds and eggs, in which they concentrated the means 

 of reproducing their kind. By processes inconceivably 

 slow, by gradations insensibly fine, exercising the patience, 

 and careful with the care as of eternal genius, the 

 patience and the care which alone produces what is 

 enduring, evolution worked. Organisations became in- 

 creasingly complex, multiplied their parts, tissues, and 

 organs. As each kind increased in numbers, in fields in 

 which room and food were limited, in environments 

 in which were times of severity and enemies of power, 

 there arose a struggle for existence. The feeblest per- 

 ished. The strongest and fittest survived, and continued 

 the onward progress. Onward, ever onward, the evolu- 

 tion marched, adding triumph to triumph. Thousands 

 of years passed, tens of thousands, millions, during which 

 variations without number were effected, and wonderful 

 advances made. Organisations the most diverse, organi- 

 sations the most complex and wonderful, with cells 

 differentiated unto myriads of times, living, seeing, 

 hearing, thinking, reasoning, and moral natures, came 

 into being. 



In the present order of things, the most highly organ- 

 ised animals are developed from germs in a few months. 

 Their development carries the organism through the same 

 stages as originally required millions of years. It reveals 



