MYSTEKY OF THE CELL 377 



strange phenomena of cell-life in liie Protozoa, and of cell- 

 division in the higher animals and plants, seem to think any- 

 thing about the hidden causes and forces at work. They are 

 so intensely interested in their discoveries, and in following 

 out the various chani^es in all their ramitications, that tliev 

 have no time and little inclination to do more than add con- 

 tinually to their knowledge of the facts. And if one attempts 

 to read through anv ffood text-book such as Parker and Has- 

 well's Zoology, or J. Arthur Thomson's Heredity, it is easy to 

 understand this. The complexities of the lower forms of life 

 are so overwhelming and their life-histories so mysterious, and 

 yet they have so much in common, and so many cross-affinities 

 among the innumerable new or rare species continually being 

 discovered, that life is not long enough to investigate the struc- 

 ture of more than a very small number of the known forms. 

 Hence very few of the writers of such books express any opin- 

 ion on those fundamental problems which Haeckel and his fol- 

 low^ers declare to have been solved by them. All questions of 

 antecedent purpose, of design in the course of development, or 

 of any organising, directive, or creative mind as the funda- 

 mental cause of life and organisation, are altogether ignored, 

 or, if referred to, are usually discussed as altogether imscien- 

 tific and as showing a deplorable want of confidence in the 

 powers of the human mind to solve all terrestrial problems. 



If, as I have attempted to do here, we take a broad and com- 

 prehensive view of the vast world of life as it is spread out be- 

 fore us, and also of that earlier world which goes back, and 

 ever further back, into the dim past among the relics of pre- 

 ceding forms of life, tracing all living things to more gen- 

 eralised and usually smaller forms; still going back, till one 

 after another of existing families, orders, and even classes, of 

 animals and plants either cease to appear ur are represented 

 only by rudimentary forms, often of types tpiite unknown to 

 us; we meet with ever greater and greater ditiiculties in dis- 

 pensing with a guiding purpose and an immanent creative 

 powder. 



