259 
combination and form, in and from matter, is therefore im- 
possible. How, then, is it possible for matter, which cannot 
change the form of its own crystal, to produce life? Matter 
nowhere acts, but is acted on by forces exterior to itself. 
Life in the simple form of the vegetable sack is totally 
distinct from and above all chemical force, which operates 
only by superimposed law. ‘The crystal can only increase by 
accretion, which, however great, cannot alter the position, 
shape, or size of the one first deposited; but the plant selects 
from the atmosphere, the earth, and the light, those things 
only which it can assimilate, and by taking them into itself 
increases its own bulk, matures its strength, and propagates 
its kind. Here, therefore, we have powers which are nowhere 
seen in mere matter, and which are certainly of a higher 
order ; and what matter has not it cannot give. If this be so 
with vegetative life, how much more with animal life, where we 
have in its most minute forms the wonderful power of volition, 
and in its progressive stages various vital and mental qualities, 
which are of an entirely different and much higher character 
than any vegetative force, and therefore much more impossible 
to mere matter. 
But, supposing life in its simplest forms already to exist, 
we are taught that it has gone on improving into more 
complete forms, until the present species have come into 
being. If this has been so, it is matter of history ; but we 
find no evidence of the existence of only imperfect and 
elementary forms of life in the earliest deposits, gradually 
growing up to perfection in the last. Then, as now, various 
gradations of complexity in structure, each suited to the con- 
ditions and purpose of life, existed as contemporaries. But, 
in all past times, we have no clear example of an animal in 
the condition of change from one species to another,* nor can we 
conceive of such change by any vital analogy of the present 
time. But, if the capability of such progress or development 
is involved in the very idea of life, as the theory supposes, it 
would not touch our present argument. For, as we have no 
example of spontaneous generation and cannot conceive of it, 
_so we must, in this case, suppose this to be the mode by which 
the Creator chose to work ; as the first life with all its poten- 
tialities must have been His gift. This is implied in the term 
evolution, which necessarily supposes involution, as potentially 
full as the evolution. ‘‘ What comes out in the web must 
first have been in the loom, and the warp, and the weft.’’ So 
"i eign Huxley’s argument as to the hipparion is very far from a 
proof, 
