ORIGIN OF LIFE. 13 
or more organic forms. Mr. Spencer’s language is 
happily free from both these defects: he neither uses 
the phraseology of the Creative Hypothesis, nor does 
he adopt a definition of biological “individuality ” 
at variance with the Evolution Philosophy. He 
distinctly teaches that living matter must have been 
at first formless, and that multiplication would have 
taken place, as amongst the lowest living units of 
the present day, exclusively by agamic methods— 
nay, more, he teaches that living matter must have 
been the gradual product or outcome of antecedent 
material combinations. “Construed in terms of evo- 
lution,” he says,* “every kind of being is conceived 
as a product of modifications wrought by insensible 
gradations on a pre-existing kind of being, and this 
holds fully of the supposed ‘commencements of 
organic life,’ as of all subsequent developments of 
organic life.” 
But on the question whether the process of Arche- 
biosis (life-evolution) is likely to have occurred once 
only, as Mr. Darwin seems to hint, or in multitudinous 
centres scattered over the earth’s surface, Mr. Spencer 
makes no definite statement. The latter belief would, 
however, be entirely in accordance with his general 
doctrine ; and we seem all the more entitled to infer 
that Mr. Spencer inclines to the notion of a multiple 
* Principles of Biology, vol. ii, Appendix, p. 482. 
