290 THE GENESrS OF SPECIES. [Chap. 



between the two pictures and the ideas they respectively 

 embody. 



The notion of a special nature, a peculiar innate power 

 and activity — what the scholastics called a "substantial 

 form " — will be distasteful to many. Tlie objection to the 

 notion seems, howeveir, to be a futile one, for it is absolute- 

 ly impossible to altogether avoid such a conception and 

 such an assumption. If we refuse it to the indivichials 

 which embody tlie species, we must admit it as regards 

 their component parts — nay, even if we accept the hypoth- 

 esis of pangenesis, wo are nevertheless (JompeUod to at- 

 tribute to each gemmule that j^eculiar power of reproducing 

 its own nature (its own "substantial form"), with its spe- 

 cial activity, and that remarkable }X)wer of annexing itself 

 to certain other well-defined gemmules whose nature it is 

 also to plant themselves in a certain definite vicinity. So 

 that in each individual, instead of one such peculiar power 

 and activity dominating and controlling all the parts, you 

 have an infinity of separate powers and activities limited 

 to the several minute component gemmules. 



It is possible that, in some minds, the notion may lurk 

 that such powers are simpler and easier to understand, be- 

 cause the bodies they affect are so minute I This absurdity 

 hardly bears stating. We can easily conceive a being so 

 small, that a gemmule would be to it as large as St. Paul's 

 would be to us. 



Admitting, then, the existence of species, and of their 

 successive evolution, is there any thing in these ideas hostile 

 to Christian belief ? 



Writers such as Vogt and Buchner will of course con- 

 tend that there is; but naturalists, generally, assume that 

 God acts in and by the various laws of Nature. And this 

 is equivalent to admitting the doctrine of " derivative cre- 

 ation." With very few exceptions, none deny such Divine 

 concurrence. Even " design " and " purpose " are recog- 



