CONCERNING PROTOPLASM. 79 



the living worlds derived their substance and their energy wholly 

 from the same source ? The affirmative answer seems to be that 

 which science tends to supply, with the qualification that, once intro- 

 duced into the universe, living matter is capable of indefinite self-re- 

 production, without necessitating any appeal for aid, by way of fresh 

 " creation " of protoplasm, to the inorganic world. As Dr. Allman has 

 remarked, it is certain "that every living creature, from the simplest 

 dweller on the confines of organisation up to the mightiest and most 

 complex organism, has its origin in pre-existent living matter that 

 the protoplasm of to-day is but the continuation of the protoplasm 

 of other ages, handed down to us through periods of indefinable and 

 indeterminable time." The harmony of these inferences with the 

 doctrine of evolution is manifest. The common origin of animal and 

 vegetable life, and the further unity of nature involved in the idea 

 that the living worlds are in reality the outcome of the lifeless past, 

 constitute thoughts which leave no break in the harmony of creation. 

 " There is grandeur," to quote Mr. Darwin's words, " in this view of 

 life," which, founded upon scientific research, simply commits its 

 supporters to the wholesome philosophic truth, that the ways of all 

 living beings are ordered in conformity with the great system of 

 natural law, whose operation is seen with equal clearness in the 

 formation, of a world or the falling of a tear. 



