xcil REPORT —1874. 
from his own principles? Diminishing gradually the number of progeni- 
tors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one ‘“ primordial form;” but he does 
not say, as far as I remember, how he supposes this form to have been in- 
troduced. He quotes with satisfaction the words of a celebrated author 
and divine who had “ gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a con- 
ception of the Deity to believe He created a few original forms, capable of 
self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required 
a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.” 
What Mr. Darwin thinks of this view of the introduction of life I do not 
know. But the anthropomorphism, which it seemed his object to set aside, 
is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with the creation 
of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses and 
two only are possible. ither let us open our doors freely to the conception 
of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of 
Matter. If we look at matter as pictured by Democritus, and as defined 
for generations in our scientific text-books, the notion of any form of life 
whatever coming out of it is utterly unimaginable. The argument placed 
in the mouth of Bishop Butler suffices, in my opinion, to crush all such ma- 
terlalism as this. But those who framed these definitions of matter were 
not biologists but mathematicians, whose labours referred only to such acci- 
dents and properties of matter as could be expressed in their formule. The 
very intentness with which they pursued mechanical science turned their 
thoughts aside from the science of life. May not their imperfect definitions 
be the real cause of our present dread? Let us reverently, but honestly, 
look the questiop. in the face. Divorced from matter, where is life to be 
found? Whatever our faith may say, our knowledge shows them to be indis- 
solubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the 
mysterious control of Mind by Matter. 
Trace the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more and more to 
what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those 
organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of 
alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have “ a 
type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular 
character.” Can we pause here? We break a magnet and find two poles 
in each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking, but, however 
small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole, 
And when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the 
polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in the case of 
life? Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he 
affirms that ‘nature is seen to do all things spontancously of herself without 
the meddling of the gods”? or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is 
not “that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, 
but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own 
womb”? Believing, as I do, in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop 
abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of tho 
mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual 
necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in 
that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwiti- 
standing our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with 
opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial Life. 
If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence to prove that any 
form of life can be deyeloped out of matter, without demonstrable anteccdent 
life, my reply is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many has 
