726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that it would continue to have a similar " origin " so long as such 

 matter continued to " grow " under the most varied conditions upon 

 and beneath the earth's surface. And, these conditions being fulfilled, 

 we have a good a priori warrant for the belief that living matter is 

 continually coming into being by virtue of the operation of the same 

 " laws " or molecular properties as suffice to regulate its growth. 



Let the Evolutionist attempt to deny it, and see what other diffi- 

 culties he plunges into, in addition to that lack of consistency which 

 I have already pointed out. 



If an evolution of living matter occurred only far back beyond the 

 depths of geologically-recorded time, and if, as Mr. Darwin * would 

 have us believe, "all the lining forms of life are the lineal descend- 

 ants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch," how is the 

 Evolutionist to explain the existence of the multitudinous myriads 

 of lowest and almost structureless organisms which exist at the pres- 

 ent day ? He starts, in his argument in favor of Evolution, from 

 the fact that the condition of homogeneity is one of necessarily un- 

 stable equilibrium. All homogeneous matter inevitably tends to be- 

 come heterogeneous, and, of the different kinds of matter, none unites 

 within itself the various qualities tending to favor this passage from 

 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the same degree as living mat- 

 ter. These tendencies are daily exemplified to us by the phases of 

 embryonic development passed through by the more or less homo- 

 geneous germs of multitudinous coniplex organisms from which they 

 proceed. The embryonic development of one of the higher animals — 

 of man himself, for instance — is a kind of highly-condensed epitome 

 of animal evolution in general. And the varied forms of life of higher 

 organization, both animal and vegetal, which have existed and still 

 exist upon the surface of our earth, are all supposed by the Evolution- 

 ist to have arisen by dint of insensible modifications wrought through 

 the long lapse of ages upon successive generations of organic forms. 

 But if living matter contains within itself the potentiality of undergoing 

 such mighty changes and of ever growing in complexity — if from ori- 

 ginally structureless protoplasm (that is, structureless, to our senses) 

 all the varied forms of life have been derived, how is it that some of 

 this very same matter should have remained through the long lapse of 

 ages almost in its primitive structureless condition? 2 Why should 

 one portion of the living matter which came into being in pre-Cambrian 

 epochs have passed through such marvelous changes, while another 

 portion has continued to grow, through all the inconceivably numer- 

 ous generations which must have occurred between that time and the 

 present, without undergoing change ? 



In other words, what is the meaning of the existence of Bacteria, 



lu Origin of Species,'' sixth edition, p. 428. 



2 The multiplication of the lowest forms of life takes place so simply that, as Prof. 

 Huxley has pointed out, it is nothing more than a process of " discontinuous growth." 



