LIFE AND MIND 



ing in bulk and reproducing its like by subdivision. 

 In this way from any beginning of living material a 

 primitive form of life would spread and would grad- 

 ually people the globe. The establishment of life 

 being once effected, all forms of organization follow 

 under the inevitable laws of evolution." Why all 

 forms of organization — why the body and brain of 

 man — must inevitably follow from the primitive 

 bit of living matter, is just the question upon which 

 we want light. The proposition begs the question. 

 Certainly when you have got the evolutionary proc- 

 ess once started in matter which has these wonder- 

 ful powers, all is easy. The professor simply de- 

 scribes what has taken place and seems to think 

 that the mystery is thereby cleared up, as if by nam- 

 ing all the parts of a machine and their relation to 

 one another, the machine is accounted for. What 

 caused the iron and steel and wood of the machine 

 to take this special form, while in other cases the 

 iron and steel and wood took other radically differ- 

 ent forms, and vast quantities of these substances 

 took no form at all? 



In working out the evolution of living forms by 

 the aid of the blind physical and chemical agents 

 alone, Professor Schafer unconsciously ascribes the 

 power of choice and purpose to the individual cells, 

 as when he says that the cells of the external layer 

 sink below the surface for better protection and 

 better nutrition. It seems to have been a matter of 



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