The Vital Substance.

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Divine sense, the doctrine of evolution: from this, which is as nothing, is created man.

This matter of life, one and the same for all, is neither indestructible nor unchangeable: it is formed of ordinary matter, and to ordinary matter returns. Fungus and oak, worm and man die, always are dying, nor can they live unless they die. "In the midst of life we are in death." Does protoplasm, thus living and dying, generate protoplasm, and so of itself, from the one primal substance, form plants and animals and men? No; only when it has been built by life into organism, into form of vegetable and animal, are vegetables and animals produced. Had we been present when living protoplasm was first evolved. from not living matter, it is unlikely that the sight would have enabled us scientifically to bring together the physical, chemical, and other conditions of existence. We may speculate about all forms of life commencing as "Monera," or simple particles of protoplasm, and that these monera originated from not living matter; we may theorise as to the monera acquiring tendencies towards the Protista, others towards the Protophyta, and others towards the Protozoa; but, though there are structural analogies, no proof exists of passage from one to another. We may think of dead matter becoming living, and in our own way settle the dispute as to the physical basis of life, for certainly at the beginning, ere life was, something began to live that was dead before; but a looker-on at the primal origin of earthly life might not have seen more of a miracle, nor anything more startling, than there is in the beginning of a new life now; yet it was a marvellous crisis in the world's history, the beginning of a state the results of which no created being can calculate.

"The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains-
Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns.

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meet-
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see :
But if we could see and hear, this vision-were it not He?"

TENNYSON.-"The Higher Pantheism."

We may, however, reverently draw nigh to this wonderful vision, and peer into the ultimate particles of living moving matter. What shall we find? Taking particles of protoplasm, they all possess the same microscopic structure, no physicist can detect any difference, within that apparent identity are those infinite varieties of molecular constitution and arrangement whence proceed all living things. This establishes an essential difference where human faculties and instruments find sameness; therefore no apparent similarity in the structure of the parrot, the cat, the dog, the monkey, can prove that they are essentially the same. In one anatomical element alone resides the attribute of life, whether it is plant, or animal, or man. The infinite difference and distance contained in this transparent, structureless, colourless, homogeneous fluid, set at nought every argument for Materialism; by proving the existence of things in matter which no physical process enables us to detect.

Now consider a remarkable assertion: "The absolute commencement of organic life on the globe I distinctly deny. The affirmation of universal evolution is itself the negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications, wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing kind of being." By this theory, life began with portions of protoplasm-not protoplasm; more minute, indefinite, and changeable than those mere fragments of matter called "protogenes." Then by a process of action and reaction between incipient types and their environments, and the survival of those fittest to live, after an enormous period of time, the comparatively well-specialised forms of ordinary Infusoria were reached. We have stated the case clearly, for there must be no mistake. The conception of a first organism, in anything like the common or natural meaning, is wholly at variance with a right view of evolution: life sprang from no life-from nothing! There can be no greater condemnation of the system as an attempted explanation of the origin of things. We are virtually told-push back the beginning far enough, 1 "Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 482. Herbert Spencer.

Beginning of Life.

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and there will be no beginning. You may gradually organise an organism by such imperceptible and inappreciable differentiation, that life never begins as life, and the organism has no absolute commencement. We are to suppose that there is a vacuum, or something else; this nothing or something is to be turned about a very long time, no one can tell by whom, till the churning makes it very hot. Then, cooling down, the particles differentiate, assort, adapt, and combine themselves. After further myriads of ages, arise those beginnings of life which are not beginnings. At length come the protophyta, real beginnings, which insensibly advance into fragrant flowers, cereal plants, fruit and forest trees. With the protophyta, or soon after, grow the protozoa into all the animals. This doctrine is commended as natural and reasonable by men who tell us that the special creation hypothesis must now be consigned to that limbo where hover the ghosts of slaughtered theories. Instead of the declaration, “God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature," we are to take these words as more natural, simple, and reasonable concerning the origin of life: "It is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity, to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." Will any one affirm that such an explanation is more lucid and explanatory than the words of Moses? "God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowls that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind." Ask a truly scientific assembly whether "the earth bringing forth and the waters bringing forth," do not equally well explain the very doing of the thing, as the integration and concomitant dissipation, and the passing from some sort of indefinite incoherent homogeneity, into "First Principles," p. 396. Herbert Spencer.

G

another sort of definite coherent heterogeneity? Yet we are told: "Now that we have arrived at this formula, we find ourselves expressing it in terms that are universal. Instead of a mere law of biology, we have enunciated the widest generalisation concerning the concrete universe as a whole.

This leap of inference on Mr Spencer's part, like the similar leap taken by Newton from the fall of the apple to the motions of the moon, is the daring act which completes the formation of the hypothesis."1 So that when a man, translating the formula, says "the joining of stuff into a lump, then the equal unjoining and sending out of movement from it, the making stuff pass from a no sort of unstickingness into some sort of holding - togetherness, while the movement not sent out undergoes a like change from no sort of keeping-togetherness into some sort of sticking," he explains the concrete universe as a whole. Really, we should not have known it, unless very clever people had told us.

A brief history of individual development gathers the mysteries of evolutionists into natural processes which are wrought continually. Take a vertebrate animal. Out of a single germinal spot are formed two cell-kernels. This process repeats itself until, by continual division or furrowing, a mulberry-shaped ball is composed. This globular lump of cells thickens at one point to form the actual body of the living thing, which soon assumes an oblong, then a fiddle-shaped form. From this shape may proceed fish, amphibious animal, reptile, bird, mammal, man. It is a simple oblong violin-shaped thin disc of three connected membranes, lying one above another. Out of the lower layer arises the inner delicate skin (epithelium) for the intestinal tube from the mouth to the anus, lung, liver, salivary glands, &c. Out of the middle layer arise all the other organs, muscles, bones, and blood-vessels. Out of the upper or outer layer arise the skin (epidermis) and the central parts of the nervous system (spinal marrow and brain). A central line or streak divides the whole into two equal lateral halves. On both sides of this furrow or streak arises a longitudinal fold,

1 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 351. John Fiske.

Natural Genesis or Evolution.

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which, growing over and joining, forms a cylindrical tube, the medullary canal, the foundation of the central nervous system, the spinal marrow. At first it is pointed at both ends, and remains so for life in the brainless, skull-less lancelet (amphioxus). In all other, the skulled or craniota animals, the fore end dilates into a roundish form as foundation of the brain. This bladder-shaped dilatation transforms into five, lying one behind the other, which are all the same in fowl, lizard, dog, man. The first, or fore brain, forms chiefly the hemispheres of the cerebrum-the seat of high mental faculties. The second bulb, the twixt brain, forms the centre of sight, and stands in closest relation to the eyes. The third bulb, the mid brain, vanishes into the so-called "four bulbs," a bossy portion of the brain, strongly developed in reptiles and birds, but in mammals it recedes. The fourth bladder, hind brain, forms the cerebellum, of which the most contradictory opinions are entertained, but it seems principally to regulate movements. The fifth bladder, after brain, develops into that important part of the central nervous system called "medulla oblongata." All these, originally arranged in the same way, develop into such different groups that it is very difficult to recognise their corresponding parts in fully organised brains. As yet, in this gradual commencement and apparently original equality, you cannot distinguish mammal, bird, reptile, from one another. The heart, the liver, the limbs, all parts of the body, are originally the same in all vertebrates, but from this stage proceed the ever increasing separation and differentiation of the higher animals, every one after his own order. It is a multiplication of mysteries. A moulding of manifold living creatures out of the same substance; a causing of infinite differences to proceed from the same original form. Men, mistaking the visible appearance for the inner mystery, and the representative process for the hidden power, inquire, "Why this process of natural genesis? Why should not Omnipotence be proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour?" As if God did not, hour by hour, produce from germ of plant and fish, of bird and beast, all the living creatures after their kind. What process is there that, long