26 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 
to account for the first appearance of life in the 
past. 
Much less shall we feel inclined to such a notion, . 
if we discern in the whole train of life on the face 
of the earth a series of developments in different 
directions, as determined as the development of the 
ovum into an adult individual. 
But, it will be said, what of the law of continuity? 
It is for the sake of continuity that spontaneous 
generation has been sought after. If, it is argued, 
the evolutions of the movements, forms, and condi- 
tions of the heavenly bodies have happened by the 
mere laws of matter, is it likely that there has been 
the intervention of miracle in peopling this world of 
life? Well, as I read the series of evolutions, we 
must begin where Plato began, with the Eternal 
and Unlimited. Matter, the lowest grade of the 
evolving cosmos in which we are placed, is an exhi- 
bition of that divine energy acting from points in 
only one manner, namely, movement in space; and 
those centres of movement only exist as such one 
for another. In that case, matter is not eternal, 
but is itself an intrusion into the field which it 
occupies, followed in the history of this globe by 
other intrusions in which all the continuity existing 
is that they occur gradually. We do not know how 
gradually matter came to its present condition ; but 
