38 EVOLUTION AND THE 
long ages of time from the influence of such external 
inciters of change. Mr. Spencer’s explanation of the 
cause of the existence of multitudinous almost struc- 
tureless organisms at the present day, therefore, as it 
appears to me, entirely falls to the ground. The lowest 
organisms cannot through long ages escape the inci- 
dence of new external conditions (such as we know, 
from actual observation, do powerfully modify them), 
neither, if they could, should the progress of organiza- 
tion thereby entirely cease—since the internal causes 
of change would still remain active and still continue 
to give rise to a ‘multiplication of effects, as Mr. 
Spencer has himself explained. 
Thus the existence of such lowest and simplest 
organisms as the microscope everywhere reveals at the 
present day, is quite irreconcilable with the position 
that life-evolution has not occurred since an epoch in- 
conceivably remote in Time. As I have elsewhere 
asked * :—“Would the Evolutionist really have us 
believe that such forms are direct continuations of an 
equally structureless matter which has existed for 
millions and millions of years without having under- 
gone any differentiation ? Would he have us believe 
‘that the simplest and most structureless Amceba of 
the present day can boast of a line of ancestors stretch- 
ing back to such far remote periods that in comparison 
* The Beginnings of Life, 1872, vol. i. p. xii. 
