196 Transactions of the Society. 



tion of crystals, which can be dissolved and caused to re-form as 

 often as we choose ; to the a^fgregation of particles of lifeless matter 

 which can be made to separate or aggregate as we will ; to 

 machines which are made by us in separate pieces and afterwards 

 put together ; and to many other things between which and living 

 particles there is not the faintest resemblance or the slightest 

 analogy. Uninquiring, unthinking persons have been, and are at 

 this time, misled by crude and false comparisons, and deceived by 

 forced and fancied analogies. The coarse materialism of our day 

 ought long ago to have been dismissed with scorn as unworthy of 

 the age in which we live, and of the acceptance of any one who 

 would not disgrace himself by helping to force thought back again 

 to the point it had reached more than two thousand years ago. 



No one acquainted with the facts of vital change can doubt 

 that phenomena of the same order as those in operation to-day 

 attended the development of primeval forms of life. For not only 

 do we meet with living matter producing the same structures as 

 existed during early periods, but it is probable that some of the 

 living things now growing and multiplying are identical with some 

 that existed in the very dawn of life-history. Unbroken continuity, 

 descent, derivation, in operation through the ages without change in 

 power or property, or alteration in form or composition ; repetition 

 without gain or exaltation; continuous descent without degradation 

 or improvement ; monotonous succession without progression or 

 advancing evolution. Nevertheless, we are expected to accept the 

 dictum that amid these myriads of myriads of similar organisms, here 

 and there one more fortunate or more gifted than the rest — we are 

 not told why, when, or how — became endowed with the marvellous 

 power of endless modification. We are asked to believe that rigid 

 laws uniformly operating with the same consequences, for ages, 

 suddenly changed, and that long - imposed uniformity gave place 

 to capability of differentiation. But if we try to realize what, 

 according to the terms of the hypothesis must have happened in 

 the living matter, into what a sea of fantastic conjecture do we 

 plunge ! The new or modified powers must have originated in or 

 emanated from particles in the very centre of minute living 

 spherules. When we consider the minuteness and insignificance 

 as far as the mere matter is concerned, of the living particles we 

 are referring to, many will, I think, be inclined to admit that it is 

 at least as probable that new forms of living mutter of this 

 infinitesimal minuteness originated anew, as that forces which 

 had been in operation for ages, under inexorable unchanging laws, 

 were entirely and suddenly changed or removed, and replaced or 

 supplemented by additional and very different forces obeying very 

 different laws. 



Moreover, as no direct or positive evidence of a reliable character 



