52 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



can say that any fruitful application even of infinite time to the 

 general problem of difference in the world is inconceivable. To 

 explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence 

 with nothing ; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. 

 Time is an entity, a something, a difference added to the 

 original identity ; whence or how came time 1 Time cannot 

 account for its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as 

 time ? Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time 

 could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is such a 

 thing as space 1 No possible clasps of time and space, further, 

 could ever conceivably thicken into matter. How is it that 

 there is such a thing as matter ? Lastly, so far. no conceivable 

 brooding, or even gyrating, of a single matter in time and space 

 could account for the specification of matter carbon, gold, 

 iodine, etc. as we see and know it. Time itself remaining 

 unaccounted for, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, 

 thus appear impassive to the action even of infinite time ; all 

 these differences are incapable of being accounted for so. 



But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, 

 which, though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how 

 about the transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr 

 Huxley tells us that, for food, the plant needs nothing but its 

 bath of smelling-salts. Suppose this bath now a pool of a 

 solution of carbonate of ammonia ; can any action of sun, or air, 

 or electricity, be conceived to develop a cell or even so much 

 lump-protoplasm in this solution? The production of an 

 initial organism in any such manner will not allow itself to be 

 realised to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment 

 of the vast differences into which, for the production of the 

 present organised world, this organism must be distributed, to 

 shake our heads and say we cannot well refuse anything to an 

 infinite time, but still we must pronounce a problem of this 

 reach hopeless. 



It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr Darwin claims 

 a solution' of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates 

 to air, heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our 

 second objection, consequently, is, that conditions are quite 

 inadequate to account for present organised differences, from a 

 single cell. Geological time, for example, falls short, after all, 

 of infinite time ; or, in known geological eras, let us calculate 

 them as liberally as we may, there is not time enough to account 

 for the presently- existing varieties, from one, or even several, 

 primordial forms. So to speak, it is not in geological time to 

 account for the transformation of the elephant into the stag 

 from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant from 

 retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the 

 growth of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of 



