BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 93 



VII.— EVOLUTIO^^. 



A COLLECTION of facts has been recorded which is sufficient to 

 enable us to form a conception of how the lowest forms of vege- 

 table and animal life have grown into more complicated forms. 

 That is to say, by the contemplation of these facts we are enabled 

 to form some conception of how that universal power we call the 

 Deity has worked to bring about the highest forms we see around 

 us from the lowest, which must have solely existed in the 

 beginning of time, and representatives of which still continue 

 to exist. 



Darwin's whole life was spent in collecting facts, by the help of 

 which he was enabled to frame a theory of Evolution. By the 

 light of this theory we are now enabled to form some conception 

 of the process by which the Deity worked in fashioning what we 

 call the creation of plants and animals. 



Physicists and astronomers have, in another direction, collected 

 a number of facts which, when colligated, enabled them to conceive 

 how the raw material of the universe could have been worked up 

 into stars, suns, planets, &c., that is, worked up to a stage fit for 

 the development of what we call living things. 



Of course this theory of Evolution has for its whole basis the 

 assumption that the elements of life exist in an amorphous* state 

 in the inanimate raw material of the universe ; otherwise, how 

 could the one be evolved out of the other by a continuous process 

 of aggregating and refining and improving and organising and 

 adapting ? 



Philosophers seem now inclined to believe that evolution among 

 living things has occurred from the am<x!boid unicellular bodies 

 to the oak, the date-tree, the horse, and man, &c. That it has 



* That is, life is potential iu the so-called inanimate elements of the 

 universe. 



