SERIAL ORGANIC EVOLUTION 253 



difference between an amoeba and a man, con- 

 sidered dynamically, is not so great if we regard 

 them in their atomic aspect. The real difficulty 

 is the origin of the first protoplasm ; and if we beg 

 the first amoeba, we may almost as well beg the 

 first monkey and man. If we can educe an amoeba 

 from a fire-mist, it seems to me there is little we 

 cannot educe ; and to put a few more organisms 

 between the inorganic and, say, a worm, does not 

 make the worm's eduction any simpler. 



The imagination may bogle at the idea of the 

 origin of the first worm or the first coelenterate 

 from the dust of the ground — from inorganic 

 molecules ; but the imagination that is able to 

 picture the origin of an amoeba from a fire-mist, 

 of an oak from an acorn, of a lily from a seed in 

 the soil, of a man from a seed in the womb, has 

 no right to decline to imagine a worm born from 

 the sea-slime. 



Even the story in the first chapter of Genesis is 

 almost as plausible as the usual evolutionary hypo- 

 thesis of the origin of species. Whichever way 

 we turn we meet miracles ; we are beset with 

 them — there is no escape. 



Whatever force made the first molecular com- 

 binations of organic life must have been so 

 strange and prodigious that all things must have 

 been possible to it. 



