378 THE WOKLD OF LIFE 



For we are necessarily led back at last to the beginnings of 

 life — to that almost infinitely remote epoch myriads of years 

 before the earliest forms of life we are acquainted with had 

 left their fragmentary remains in the rocks. Then, at some 

 definite epoch, the rudiments of life must have appeared. But 

 whenever it began, whenever the first vegetable cell began its 

 course of division and variation ; and when, very soon after, 

 the animal cell first appeared to feed upon it and be developed 

 at its exj)ense, — from that remote epoch, through all the ages 

 till our own day, a continuous, never-ceasing, ever-varying 

 process has been at work in the two great kingdoms, vegetal 

 and animal, side by side, and always in close and perfect 

 adaptation to each other. 



Myriads of strange forms have appeared, have given birth 

 to a variety of species, have reached a maximum of size, and 

 have then dwindled and died out, giving way to higher and 

 better-adapted creatures ; but never has there been a complete 

 break, never a total destruction, even of terrestrial forms of 

 life ; but ever and ever they became more numerous, more varied, 

 more beautiful, and hetler adapted to tJie wants, the 'material 

 'progresSj, the higher enjoyments of mankind. 



The whole vast series of species of plants and animals, with 

 all their diversities of form and structure, began at the very 

 dawn of life upon the cooling earth with a single cell (or with 

 myriads of cells) such as those whose structure and properties 

 we have here been considering; and every single individual of 

 the myriads of millions Avhich have ever lived upon the earth 

 have each begun to be developed from a similar but not idm- 

 tical cell ; and all the possibilities of all their organs, and 

 structures, and secretions, and organic products have arisen out 

 of such cells; and we are asked to believe that tliese cells and 

 all their maiwellous outcome are the result of the fortuitous 

 clash of atoms with the help of '^ an unconscious cell-soul of 

 the most primitive and rudimentary kind ! " 



