AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 51 



ism, are involved in the necessity of an egg; it would place 

 protoplasm, as formed from molecules, undeniably at length on 

 a merely chemical level; and, his theory being sound, would 

 fairly enable Mr Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff, to 

 account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought 

 that appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we 

 must believe the theory of the molecularists still to await the 

 proof; while the theory of Mr Darwin has many difficulties 

 peculiar to itself. This theory, philosophically, or in ultimate 

 analysis, is an attempt to prove that design, or the objective 

 idea, especially in the organic world, is developed in time by 

 natural means. The time which Mr Darwin demands, it is true, 

 is an infinite time ; and he thus gains the advantage of his 

 processes being allowed greater clearness for the understanding, 

 in consequence of the obscurity of the infinite past in which they 

 are placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to 

 deny any possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, 

 Are such processes credible in any time f What Mr Darwin 

 has done in aid of his view is, first, to lay before us a knowledge 

 of facts in natural history of surprising richness ; and, second, 

 to support this knowledge by an inexhaustible ingenuity of 

 hypothesis in arrangement of appearances. Now, in both 

 respects, whether for information or even interest, the value of 

 Mr Darwin's contribution will probably always remain inde- 

 pendent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his 

 leading proposition ; and it is with this proposition that we 

 have here alone to do. As said, we ask only, jfs it true that the 

 objective idea, the design which we see in the organised world, 

 is the result in infinite time of the necessary adaptation of 

 living structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which 

 they are surrounded I 



Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalisation 

 may be viewed as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, 

 that is, the only agency postulated by Mr Darwin is time 

 infinite time ; and as regards actually existent beings and 

 actually existent conditions, it is hardly possible to deny any 

 possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for example, that 

 the elephant, if only obliged infinitely to run, might be con- 

 verted into the stag, how should we be able to deny ? So also, 

 if the lengthening of the giraffe's neck were hypothetically 

 attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time that only 

 left the leaves of trees for long-necked animals to live on, we 

 should be similarly situated as regards denial. Still it can be 

 pointed out that ingenuity of natural conjecture has, in such 

 cases, no less wide a field for the negation than for the affirma- 

 tion ; and that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of 

 being determined. But we can also say more than that we 



