ON THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND 



creation of a single living form, of a caterpd 

 nothing, is no less difficult than the creation of a world 

 or a host of worlds (possibly, indeed, it would be the 

 more difficult feat of the two); for the mere physical 

 magnitude makes no difference in the intrinsic difficulty, 

 or, let us say rather, in its utter inconceivability and 

 absurdity, even as a possible notion. But chemical com- 

 bination to produce life ! this, you say, is equally incon- 

 ceivable and impossible. Not so. We merely conceive 

 new properties to result from a new arrangement of the 

 chemical constituents of matter a thing with which 

 the eye of Science is very familiar in her analysis and 

 interrogation of Nature's processes. But, again, you 

 say, we cannot conceive how life should have originally 

 resulted from a particular arrangement of molecules. 

 Can you conceive, then, how it now results from such an 

 .arrangement, though it does as a fact, as the most 

 eminent embryologists have shown us ? Or can you 

 conceive how, at the present moment, as the basis of life 

 there is only protoplasm, in the last analysis produced 

 merely by the physical and chemical properties of 

 oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, with some other 

 elements in small proportions, duly combined together ? 

 Can you conceive, in fact, how anything which is wholly 

 different from its elements should yet proceed from 

 them ? how water, for instance, should come from 

 oxygen and hydrogen ? and yet it does as a fact, how- 

 ever inconceivable and inexplicable, and how little 

 soever we could have expected such a wonderful trans- 

 formation beforehand. At bottom, indeed, can you con- 

 ceive why anything should come from anything, beyond 

 the fact, which the senses constantly show us, or which 

 Science, assisting our senses, discovers for us, that it 

 ^actually does so happen? In the end, all final facts, all 



