728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of forces at work, adds to the diversity of effects produced. This 

 multiplication of effects is proved to be similarly traceable through- 

 out Nature." Now, if causes like these are inevitably at work upon 

 and within the simplest forms of life, no change in external condi- 

 tions would be needed in order to insure an increasing complexity 

 of structure, through months or years, to say nothing about long 

 ages of time. But, as a matter of fact, granting that the liability of 

 organisms to increase in complexity of structure " arises from the 

 actions and reactions between organisms and their fluctuating envi- 

 ronments," and seeing that these changes in the environment are 

 enumerated by Mr. Spencer as being due to " astronomic, geologic, 

 meteorologic, and organic agencies," organisms never could by any 

 possibility shelter themselves through long ages of time even from 

 the influence of these external inciters of change. Mr. Spencer's ex- 

 planation of the cause of the existence of multitudinous almost struct- 

 ureless organisms at the present day, therefore, entirely falls to the 

 ground. The lowest organisms can neither escape the incidence of 

 new external conditions (such as we know from actual observation do 

 powerfully modify them), neither, if they could, should the progress 

 of organization thereby cease — since the internal causes of change 

 would still remain active and still continue to give rise to a " multi- 

 plication 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 irrecon- 

 cilable with the position that life-evolution has not occurred since an 

 epoch inconceivably remote in Time. Admit the present occurrence 

 of Archebiosis and Heterogenesis, and both the existence and protean 

 variability of the lowest organisms are at once readily explained. 

 We may suppose them continually seething into existence afresh, en- 

 dowed with enormous plasticity ; so that new recruits are constantly 

 appearing, ever ready to fill up the gaps which would otherwise be 

 occasioned by promotion and death. The opposite doctrine, con- 

 cerning such organisms as the structureless Amoeba and the insignifi- 

 cant Mucor now daily appearing on decaying substances, seems op- 

 posed to all reason from the point of view of the Evolution Philoso- 

 phy. 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 undergone any differentiation ? Would he have 

 us believe that the simplest and most structureless Amoeba of the 

 present day can boast of a line of ancestors stretching back to such 

 far remote periods that in comparison with them the primeval men 

 were but as things of yesterday ? The notion surely is preposterously 

 absurd; or, if true, the fact would be sufficient to overthrow the very 

 first principles of their own Evolution philosophy." — Authors Advance 



Sheets. 



1 " The Beginnings of Life," 1872, vol. i., p. 12. 



