252 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



mean serial genetic relationship. The assumption 

 — which is a quite legitimate assumption — that 

 life began at various parts of the world in varying 

 forms, greatly simplifies the process of evolution. 



But personally we are prepared to go a step 

 further, and to say that it is quite possible that 

 many existent species from amoeba to man began 

 in some form very much like their present form, 

 and have varied since their birth only within very 

 narrow limits. It is quite possible, since we find 

 that existent species do vary only within narrow 

 limits. It is quite possible, since it is as easy to 

 conceive the evolution of self-contained species 

 as to conceive the translation of species to species 

 by any process of evolution. Organic evolution 

 was brought forward to explain the origin of 

 species ; but it itself can only be explained by 

 assuming a formative force working consistently 

 down the centuries, aided hardly at all by the 

 suggested means of selection ; and it is quite as 

 easy to imagine that this force acted quickly as 

 slowly — indeed, it is more easy to imagine it acting 

 straightway, since every day we see such action in 

 the formation of an ^gg^ and in the development 

 from the tgg of the individual. To bring man 

 from an amoeba in some hundreds of thousands of 

 years is no less a miracle than to bring him from 

 an ovum in a few months. And, after all, the 



