956 Vestiges of Creation. 



general parallelism and analogy. We have already seen that this 

 nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature and independent being in 

 the infusory animalcules, as well as the starting point of the foetal pro- 

 gress of every higher individual in creation, both animal and vegetable. 

 We have seen that it is a form of being which there is some reason to 

 believe electric agency will produce — though not, perhaps, usher 

 into full life — in albumen, one of those component materials of animal 

 bodies, in whose combinations it is believed there is no chemical 

 peculiarity forbidding their being any day realized in the laboratory." 

 —p. 208. 



Mark this ! but hear the author out. 



" Remembering these things, we are drawn on to the supposition, 

 that the first step in the creation of life upon this planet was a che- 

 mico-electric operation, by which simple germinal vesicles were pro- 

 duced. This is so much, but what were the next steps ? I suggest, 

 as an hypothesis countenanced by much that is ascertained, and likely 

 to be further sanctioned by much that remains to be known, that the 

 first* step was an advance under favour of peculiar conditions, from, 

 the simplest forms of being, to the next more complicated, and this 

 through the medium of the ordinary process of generation." — p. 210. 



So this germ or animalcule begets its likeness, and so on from gene- 

 ration to generation, while the law remains unaltered ; but at certain 

 intervals, at a certain cycle of generations, say the thousandth, or the 

 millionth, the law alters, and after the alteration, the race becomes 

 improved. In illustration of this alteration, Mr. Babbage's calculating 

 machine is adduced, and a long passage is cited from that eminent 

 writer's ' Ninth Bridgewater Treatise,' which we forbear quoting, be- 

 cause we are inclined fully to admit the position taken by the learned 

 author, while we totally deny its applicability to the purely physiolo- 

 gical question ; and this on the simple ground, that Mr. Babbage's 

 machine, however wonderful, is under his own control, and therefore, 

 that the alteration of the law is as much a matter of contrivance as 

 the machine itself, and consequently, does not in the least support 

 the hypothesis, that a certain species, after continuing unchanged 

 through many generations, shall, at a certain point in its history, pro- 

 duce some other species. To proceed, at each change of law 



" Hie simplest and most primitive type under a law to which that 

 of like production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above 

 it, that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very 



* This should certainly be second. 



