Nature as it Was. 169 



come into play ? u Once establish, " he says, " by 

 clear and unmistakable demonstration, the life-his- 

 tory of an organism, and truly some change must 

 have come over nature as a whole, if that life-history 

 be not the same to-morrow as to-day; and the same 

 to one observer, in the same conditions, as to an- 

 other." " Every piece of living protoplasm we see 

 has a history: it is the inheritor of countless millions 

 of years. It is the protoplasm of some definite 

 form of life, which has inherited its specific history. 

 It can no more be false to that inheritance, than an 

 atom of oxygen can be false to its properties." 

 Both have been as they are from the beginning. 

 Like the lines in the solar spectrum, they are par- 

 allel to all other lines; and forms may come in be- 

 tween, only to be parallel still in their history. 

 They may group together in certain general colors 

 as it were, in the yellow, and the red and the blue; 

 but they are parallel everywhere; and never meet. 

 Where, then, did these lines of species come from ? 

 An adequate cause. What is that ? Not transfor- 

 mation of one into another. 



189. We will admit therefore what is correct in 

 the statement of evolution. We will tolerate the 

 expression of it even in such turgid and 

 loose declamation, as that " the irrefrag- 1*^***°* 

 able philosophy of modern biology is 

 that the most complex forms of living creatures 

 have derived their splendid complexity and adapta- 

 tions from the slow and majestically progressive 



