DAR W1NISM AND OTHER BRANCHES OF SCIENCE. 553 



may be intelligible when we have so many units to deal 

 with. 



An illustration will perhaps make the argument clearer. 

 Take a million and a half of little black marks, put 

 them in a certain order, and we have a wondrous re- 

 sult Darwin's "Descent of Man." This book merely 

 consists of about a million and a half letters, placed one 

 after the other in a certain order. Whatever be the com- 

 plexity of the ant's brain, it is still hard to believe that it 

 could not be fully described in 400,000 volumes, each as 

 large as Darwin's work. Yet the number of molecules in 

 the ant's brain is at least 400,000 times as great as the 

 number of letters in the memorable volume in question. 



It would seem that by merely studying the behaviour 

 of an infusion of hay or a tincture of turnips in a test 

 tube, we do not rise to the full magnificence of the problem 

 as to whether life can have originated on the globe from 

 the particles of inorganic matter. 



Unusual, indeed, must be the circumstances which will 

 have brought about such a combination of atoms as to 

 form the first organic being. But great events are always 

 unusual. Because we cannot repeatedly make an organ- 

 ized being from inert matter in our test tubes, are we to 

 say that such an event can never once have occurred with 

 the infinite opportunities of nature ? We have in nature 

 the most varied conditions of temperature, of pressure, 

 and of chemical composition. Every corner of the earth 

 and of the ocean has been the laboratory in which these 

 experiments have been carried on. It is not necessary to 

 suppose that such an event as the formation of an organ- 

 ized being shall have occurred often. If in the whole 



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