200 



FACTS AND FANCIES 



producing considerable difference of proper- 

 ties. Let us try, then, to calculate of how 

 many differences of arrangement the atoms of 

 one molecule of protoplasm are susceptible, 

 and then to calculate of how many changes 

 these different assemblages are capable in a 

 microscopic dot composed of two million four 

 hundred thousand of them. It is scarcely neces- 

 sary to say that such a calculation, in the multi- 

 tudes of possibilities involved, transcends human 

 powers of imagination ; yet it answers questions 

 of mechanical and chemical grouping merely, 

 without any reference to the additional mystery 

 of life. Let it be observed that this vastly com- 

 plex material is assumed as if there were noth- 

 ing remarkable in it, by many of those theorists 

 who plausibly explain to us the spontaneous 

 origin of living things. But nature, in arrang- 

 ing all the parts of a complicated animal before- 

 hand in an apparently structureless microsco- 

 pic ovum, has all these vast numbers to deal with 

 in working out the exact result ; and this not in 

 one case merely, but in multitudes of cases in- 

 volving the most varied combinations. We can 

 scarcely suppose the atoms themselves to have 

 the power of thus unerringly marshalling them- 

 selves to work out the sti*uctures of organisms 



