106 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



seen that it is a form of being which electric agency will 

 produce — though not, perhaps, usher into full life — in 

 albumen, one of those compound elements of animal bo- 

 dies, of which another (urea) has been made by artificial 

 means. Remembering these things, we are drawn on to 

 the supposition, that the first step in the creation of life 

 upon this planet was a chemico- electric operation, by 

 which simple germinal vesicles were produced. This is 

 so much, but what were the next steps ? Let a common 

 vegetable infusion help us to answer. There, as we have 

 seen, simple forms are produced at first, but afterwards 

 they become more complicated, until at length the life- 

 producing powers of the infusion are exhausted. Are we 

 to presume that, in this case, the simple engender the 

 complicated ? Undoubtedly, this would not be more won- 

 derful as a natural process than one which we never think 

 of wondering at, because familiar to us — namely, that in 

 the gestation of the mammals, the animalcule-like ovum 

 of a few days is the parent, in a sense, of the chick-like 

 • form of a few weeks, and that in all the subsequent stages 

 — fish, reptile, &c. — the one may, with scarcely a meta- 

 phor be said to be the progenitor of the other. I suggest, 

 then, as an hypothesis already countenanced by much that 

 is ascertained, and likely to be further sanctioned by 

 much that remains to be known, that the first step was an 

 advance under favor of peculiar conditions, from the sim- 

 plest forms of being, to the next more complicated, and 

 this through the medium of the ordinary process of gene- 

 ration. 



Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is 

 calculated to impress a conviction that each species inva- 

 riably produces its like. But I would here call attention 

 to a remarkable illustration of natural law which has been 

 brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater 

 Treatise. The reader is requested to suppose himself 

 seated before the calculating machine, and observing it. 

 It is moved by a weight, and there is a wheel which re- 

 volves through a small angle round its axis, at short inter- 

 vals, presenting to his eye successively, a series of num- 

 bers engraved on its divided circumference. 



pet the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. 

 of natural r ambers, each of which succeeds its immediate 

 antecedent *y unity. 



"Now, eader," says Mr. Babbage, "let me ask you 



