IN EVOLUTION FROM A GEOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW. C77 
of a material view, but one which needs the sun’s rays to 
produce it. 
5 (11). It may also be observed that a flaw in its evidence 
to extreme evolution lies in the fact that the structure of the 
embryonic cell is very far removed from that uniform 
simplicity, which used to be (if it is not still) logically 
assumed for the starting-point of life. Without pursuing this 
point further it may be enough to note how the process of 
Karyokinesis, as described in this year’s Presidential Address 
of the British Association, presents not only specialized 
energy but elaborate machinery in the fundamental struc- 
tures on which the science of embryology is built. Either 
the most primitive embryo does in no way correspond to 
primal life, or primal life must in specialization have been 
very far removed from the simplicity of that chaotic 
organism which some have almost seemed to hope might be 
deduced from the inorganic by little more than accident. 
5 (12). A difficulty is also developed by a difference be- 
tween the arguments for evolution from embryology and 
from paleontology, which must be regarded as fundamentally 
important. In both we trace from the embryo to the mature, 
from protoplasm to perfection, but in embryology we have 
something behind the protoplasm, viz., the perfect parent, 
which, if it does not explain the cause of the growth, at least 
gives an antecedent reason for expecting its result. But 
extreme evolution as exemplified by paleontology knows of 
no parent. To imagine some highly organized being as the 
parent of primeval protoplasm would be at once to upset the 
whole theory of the evolution of nature. In that no one would 
suggest a recurring series, but only asimple advance. If then 
embryology be called to evidence, arguments from a recurring 
series have to be applied to explain a simple advance. It 
remains therefore that to the “unknown quantity” of growth 
in embryology we have to add the “unknown quantity ” of 
origin in palwontology before the facts of the former can be 
logically brought into line for application to prove extreme 
evolution. 
6. With such difficulties to its action in view, we turn now 
to the question whether extreme evolution can be of itself 
conceivable as the “ratio” of the present cosmos. 
Here we are met at once by four considerations. 
(1) No rational explanation of the origin of primeval proto- 
plasm itself has ever been given except the creative action of an 
outside Power. Nothing can be predicated to it which could 
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