62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



depend on the one hand on its construction, and, on the other, on the 

 energy supplied to it ; and to speak of vitality as anything but the 

 name for a series of operations is as if one should talk of the horo- 

 logity of a clock." It would, I think, scarcely be possible to put into 

 the same number of words a greater amount of unscientific assumption 

 and unproved statement than in this sentence. Is "living proto- 

 plasm " different in any way from dead protoplasm, and, if so, what 

 causes the difference ? What is a " machine " ? Can we conceive of 

 a self-produced or uncaused machine, or one not intended to work out 

 some definite results? The results of the machine in question are 

 said to be " vital phenomena " ; certainly most wonderful results, and 

 greater than those of any machine man has yet been able to construct ! 

 But why " vital " ? If there is no such thing as life, surely they are 

 merely physical results. Can mechanical causes produce other than 

 physical effects ? To Aristotle, life was " the cause of form in organ- 

 isms." Is not this quite as likely to be true as the converse proposi- 

 tion ? If the vital phenomena depend on the " construction " of the 

 machine, and the " energy supplied to it," whence this construction, 

 and whence this energy ? The illustration of the clock does not help 

 us to answer this question. The construction of the clock depends on 

 its maker, and its energy is derived from the hand that winds it up. 

 If we can think of a clock which no one has made and which no one 

 winds — a clock constructed by chance, set in harmony with the uni- 

 verse by chance, wound up periodically by chance — we shall then 

 have an idea parallel to that of an organism living, yet without any 

 vital energy or creative law ; but in such a case we should certainly 

 have to assume some antecedent cause, whether we call it " horologi- 

 ty " or by some other name. Perhaps the term " evolution " would 

 serve as well as any other, were it not that common sense teaches that 

 nothing can be spontaneously evolved out of that in which it did not 

 previously exist. 



There is one other unsolved problem, in the study of life by the 

 geologist, to which it is still necessary to advert. This is the inability 

 of paleontology to fill up the gaps in the chain of being. In this re- 

 spect, we are constantly taunted with the imperfection of the record ; 

 but facts show that this is much more complete than is generally sup- 

 posed. Over long periods of time and many lines of being, we have 

 a nearly continuous chain ; and, if this does not show the tendency 

 desired, the fault is as likely to be in the theory as in the record. On 

 the other hand, the abrupt and simultaneous appearance of new types 

 in many specific and generic forms, and over wide and separate areas 

 at one and the same time, is too often repeated to be accidental. 

 Hence paleontologists, in endeavoring to establish evolution, have been 

 obliged to assume periods of exceptional activity in the introduction 

 of species, alternating with others of stagnation — a doctrine differing 

 very little from that of special creation as held by the older geologists. 



