of life ? If the “ form ” which was first created was like the 
first example here supposed, and hence “ simple,” by what 
conceivable condition could it be made to give origin to the 
second “ form” ? That requires three sorts of atoms,” but 
this has only one sort. We could hold to this pangenesis 
only by believing that the first forms, instead of being simple, 
were infinitely complex ! 
But let us take another of his illustrations. He says, — “ I 
presume that no physiologist doubts that, for instance, each 
bone-corpuscle of the finger differs from the corresponding 
corpuscle in the corresponding joint of the toe ; and there can 
hardly be a doubt that even those on the corresponding sides 
of the body differ, though almost identical in nature. This 
near approach to identity is curiously shown in many diseases 
in which the same exact points on both sides of the body are 
similarly affected.”* It is here very evident that there is one 
great truth which Darwin overlooks in the construction of his 
theory. In carrying out his idea of innumerable atoms such 
as would fly, each to its respective bone or part of a bone, or 
any other part of the material body, he speaks of the smallness 
of the atoms of the virus of small-pox that convey the disease, 
and of the small portion of diseased mucus from a plague- 
stricken ox, which is sufficient to corrupt the whole mass of a 
healthy animal when introduced into its blood ; and he says, 
— “ The organic particles with which the wind is tainted over 
miles of space by certain offensive animals must be infinitely 
minute and numerous, yet they strongly affect the olfactory 
nerves.” f But there are no such particles, any more than there 
are “ organic particles ” in the sounds that affect the auditory 
nerves. He is dreaming of the old notion that led men to 
calculate all the “ imponderables such as how light a bushel 
of smell must be when a rose could give off as much as would 
fill and refill a large hall with that material for weeks or months 
together ! He forgets that all such notions are banished from 
tolerably informed minds, and that smells, like sounds, consist 
of movements only. What is necessary but a movement of a 
peculiar kind given to the particles of the blood, or to the 
substance of the sympathetic nerves of the living body, in order 
to the plague itself ? The electric shock we now know does 
not discharge particles of some peculiar substance called “ the 
fluid of electricity ” through that body which is rendered a life- 
less mass by it in less than a second of time. It communicates 
only such a motion as absorbs that other motion which we call 
Life, and leaves that stagnation which we call Death. But 
* Var. of Plants , vol. ii. p. 369 . 
t Ibid. vol. ii. p. 03 . 
