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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Life: Its True Genesis
+
+Author: R. W. Wright
+
+Posting Date: August 24, 2014 [EBook #9307]
+Release Date: November, 2005
+First Posted: September 19, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Life: Its True Genesis
+
+By R. W. Wright
+
+
+
+
+[Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--
+
+Οὗ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ χατὰ γένος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. [Septuagint.]
+
+"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
+upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]
+
+Second Edition
+
+1884
+
+
+
+RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
+TO
+ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.
+OF CHESHIRE, CONN.
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Prefatory
+
+Chapter I.    Introductory.
+Chapter II.   Life--Its True Genesis.
+Chapter III.  Alternations of Forest Growths.
+Chapter IV.   The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+Chapter V.    Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+Chapter VI.   Distribution and Permanence of Species.
+Chapter VII.  What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+Chapter VIII. Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+Chapter IX.   Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+Chapter X.    Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.
+
+
+
+
+Preface to Second Edition.
+
+
+
+Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
+that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
+thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
+spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
+is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
+the tenth verse:
+
+"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
+thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (_the earth_) bring forth
+and bud (_not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth_), that it (_the
+earth_) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (_man being the
+only sower of seed and eater of bread_): so shall my Word be (_the Word of
+Life_) that goeth forth out of my mouth (_the mouth of the Lord_); it
+shall not return unto me void (_i.e., lifeless_), but it shall accomplish
+that which I (_the Lord Jehovah_) please, and it (_the living Word_) shall
+prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
+
+This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
+hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
+and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
+come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
+tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
+shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
+and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
+"Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
+nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
+conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
+by the divine fiat.
+
+In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
+this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
+In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
+Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
+history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
+volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
+flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
+on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
+and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
+vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
+as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
+the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
+There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
+in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
+remarkable formula is taken.
+
+We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
+as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
+instead of God, in their philosophical writings.
+
+As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after _Truth_ as it is to be
+found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of
+science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is
+only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no
+foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a
+lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing
+more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to
+accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner
+than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to
+others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following.
+But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with
+being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a
+scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.
+
+When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
+years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
+we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
+for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
+have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
+they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
+referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
+Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
+the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
+toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
+life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
+ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
+nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
+forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
+without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
+to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
+food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
+dead batrachian inside of one year.
+
+This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
+between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
+finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
+riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
+there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
+the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
+these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
+any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.
+
+The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
+Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
+and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
+boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
+force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
+characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
+sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
+the road-sides, and the _débris_ scraped into the centre of the road-beds;
+the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside
+rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break
+the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones
+etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in
+length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that
+they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no
+trace of a mother toad in connection with them.
+
+The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
+early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
+propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
+they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
+any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
+circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
+in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
+appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
+is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
+by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
+made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
+Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
+sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
+taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
+the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.
+
+What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
+almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
+inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
+the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
+where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
+It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
+of the town.
+
+The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
+of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
+in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
+he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
+expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
+on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
+enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
+not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
+blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
+out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common _Rana_
+family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
+similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
+reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
+apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.
+
+Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet
+into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water
+secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as
+well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they
+wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog,
+originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would
+make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well
+enough as one of the _Rana_ family. It was only to our more intelligent
+neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we
+stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it
+appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are
+equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water
+from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm
+sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting.
+The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing
+their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young
+wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the
+open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch
+out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest
+study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the
+proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable
+modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the
+tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn
+months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to
+ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the
+development of this little pest of the _Culex_ family, independently of
+the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a
+little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the
+netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as
+every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated
+on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into
+a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly
+devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the
+full-fledged mosquito is reached.
+
+All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
+experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
+demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
+covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
+harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
+water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
+their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
+world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
+we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
+Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
+in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
+acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
+the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
+convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
+ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
+may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
+for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
+question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
+now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
+Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
+that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
+have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
+mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
+little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
+knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
+about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
+especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
+knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
+Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
+the same becoming courtesy.
+
+In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
+"Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
+more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.
+
+Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
+other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
+the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
+conspicuously in the historic page.
+
+When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
+frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
+operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
+us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
+batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
+highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
+that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
+earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
+vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
+in the beginning.
+
+One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
+scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
+have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
+diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
+centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
+environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
+living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
+thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
+their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
+pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
+went forth.
+
+As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
+life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
+Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural
+_habitat_ of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that
+the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the
+extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is
+manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the
+common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller
+mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,
+as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt
+sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long
+thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without
+the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped
+along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will
+be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and
+not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,
+locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale
+the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters
+from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that
+these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing
+conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes
+its appearance.
+
+There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
+another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
+from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
+nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
+the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
+appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
+previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
+than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
+bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
+will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
+not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
+dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
+of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
+acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
+out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
+and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
+months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
+specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.
+
+Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
+University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
+for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
+as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
+the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
+the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
+in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
+periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
+strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
+text; as, for instance, the _Trilobites_, occurring so abundantly in what
+is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance,
+whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil,
+characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much
+in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the
+presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of
+the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of
+these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long
+enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked
+the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest
+scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.
+
+All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
+governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "_similia
+similibus gignuntur_"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains
+universally. The _Graptolites_, occurring in the bituminous shales of the
+Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to
+which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of
+natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the
+fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible
+teaches us.
+
+When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
+minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
+Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
+rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
+great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
+induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
+he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
+several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
+be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
+Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.
+
+When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
+than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
+true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
+spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
+command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
+of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
+study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
+every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
+amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
+paper on the _Archæopterix_, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a
+case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing
+a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was
+trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every
+one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.
+
+It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
+not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
+have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
+the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
+strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
+upon the Matterhorn!
+
+Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
+be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
+the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
+of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
+least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
+themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
+that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
+the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
+mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
+"Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
+the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
+period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
+physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
+expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
+materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
+and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
+took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
+we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
+which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
+least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
+defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
+Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
+English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
+pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
+Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
+Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
+other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
+twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
+events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
+place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
+unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
+is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
+appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.
+
+When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
+of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
+of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
+institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
+know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
+command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
+not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
+of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
+power of life in matter.
+
+That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
+their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
+asserts they originally came from.
+
+And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
+thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
+earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
+changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
+energy intervene!
+
+"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
+our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
+material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
+his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
+the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
+word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
+sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
+purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
+light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
+with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
+millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!
+
+In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
+the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
+over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
+it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
+takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
+where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
+higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
+dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
+Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
+Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
+of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
+We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
+conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
+for good or for evil.
+
+We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
+our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
+doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
+at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to _The
+National Quarterly Review_, for the captious manner in which it treated us
+after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
+two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a
+class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and
+enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
+criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
+thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
+several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
+had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
+as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
+handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
+science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
+materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
+the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
+adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
+so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
+respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
+content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
+fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
+waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
+of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
+and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
+Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
+by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
+unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
+demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
+was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
+writer's own face.
+
+But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
+in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
+indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
+our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as _The National
+Quarterly Review_ speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
+friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.
+
+If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
+if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
+for them to regret, and for us to deplore.
+
+To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
+thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
+what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
+thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:
+
+  "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,
+  Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow
+  With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been
+  All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,
+  Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain
+  The long night through, and wake at early dawn
+  To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"
+
+R. W. Wright.
+
+West Cheshier, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+Prefatory.
+
+
+
+The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
+public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
+introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
+may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
+salutation untouched.
+
+The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
+traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
+and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
+conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: _That the
+primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
+things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
+they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions exist_.
+
+The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
+the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
+the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
+The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
+Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
+Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
+biblical and scientific scholar.
+
+In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
+that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
+named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
+we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
+imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
+into the same lines of incidence in human thought.
+
+Science has long taught that the _absence_ of necessary physiological
+conditions results everywhere in the _disappearance_ of vital phenomena;
+by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the _presence_ of
+these necessary conditions results everywhere in the _appearance_ of vital
+phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it
+is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after
+each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand
+years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved
+the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither
+sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have
+anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each
+yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life)
+was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its
+appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural
+seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.
+
+And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
+the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
+forests where pine have been cleared away, and _vice versa_, in some parts
+of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So
+with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
+over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
+glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
+find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
+without the possible intervention of natural seeds.
+
+The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
+Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
+years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
+undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
+century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
+roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
+them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
+of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
+the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
+points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
+subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.
+
+According to Irenæus, this Greek version was rendered at the request of
+Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library,
+and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic
+scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed
+upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to
+our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most
+conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis
+of life" we derive therefrom.
+
+Σπέρμα (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical
+signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "_germ_ of anything,"
+or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives
+or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of
+"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no
+plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which
+seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more
+comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of
+life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used
+it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms
+σπερματ´κοὶ γόγοι expressing "the _laws of generation contained in
+matter_"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual
+connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let
+the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
+yielding fruit after his kind, _whose germinal principle of life, each in
+itself after its kind, is upon the earth_"
+
+We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
+complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
+scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
+Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.
+
+But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
+The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
+rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
+development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
+do with the '_odium theologicum_?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both
+theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
+agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
+scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
+nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
+the Hebrew _Hagiographa_, of what less value is it to science than if it
+had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
+inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
+science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
+Herbert Spencer?
+
+Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
+all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
+longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
+operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
+speculation to pry. We know what nature _does_, or may know it by the
+proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
+than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
+the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
+science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
+without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
+an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
+tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
+land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
+bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
+as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
+endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
+requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
+oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
+primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
+organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
+gemmule, thousands of years ago.
+
+He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
+thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
+our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
+theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
+rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
+transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
+_molécules organiques_, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
+"life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulæ,
+with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
+or twenty years.
+
+Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
+speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
+and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
+motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
+the public. [1]
+
+R. W. Wright.
+
+West Cheshire, Conn.
+
+
+
+
+
+True Genesis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Introductory.
+
+
+
+It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
+speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
+tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
+utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
+conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
+prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
+current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
+rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
+more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
+speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
+have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
+substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
+persistent elements in the universe--_Matter_ and _Motion_. Everything
+else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else
+essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
+theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
+two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
+conclusions respecting matter.
+
+Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
+and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
+claim, of one and the same force in the universe--_Motion_, With the
+exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
+ever active and reactive agency.
+
+Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
+more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
+or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
+postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
+of molecules.
+
+Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
+Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
+unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
+stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
+special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
+transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
+exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
+its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
+because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
+averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+
+And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
+speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
+among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
+last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
+who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
+the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
+as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
+ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
+the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
+dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
+life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
+mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
+of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
+non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
+the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
+beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
+or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
+all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, _de
+novo_? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly
+allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied
+to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to
+provoke both incredulity and derision.
+
+The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
+professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
+as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
+most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
+of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
+and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
+enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
+laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
+putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
+cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
+dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
+mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
+the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
+nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
+nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
+conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.
+
+But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
+greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
+either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
+logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
+only a negative conclusion shall follow.
+
+"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.
+
+Life is neither matter nor motion,
+
+Therefore: Life is not indestructible.
+
+This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
+distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
+incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
+neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
+thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
+illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
+that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
+without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
+embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
+have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
+to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
+such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
+realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
+that this conscious _ego_--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes
+attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the
+order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we
+are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the
+theological conception of a God--the one supreme _Ego_ of the
+universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
+apprehensive intelligence, is derived.
+
+We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
+order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
+constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
+inductions:--
+
+1. Cause must exist before effect.
+
+2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preëxisting as a cause, there
+can be no life-manifestation.
+
+3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.
+
+4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.
+
+5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
+an effect?
+
+6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
+both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
+incongruent and conflictive judgment.
+
+7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
+whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.
+
+8. Hence Life, either as a preëxisting cause or vital agency, must precede
+both animal and vegetal organism.
+
+Again:--
+
+9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
+which is produced by an operating cause.
+
+10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
+as an operating cause.
+
+11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
+must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
+cause before there is any produced effect.
+
+12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.
+
+13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
+equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.
+
+And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
+be can no matter without an existing _ego_, in some state of consciousness
+in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what,
+therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion,
+except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as
+we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that
+"breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living
+soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.
+All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a
+rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once
+defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
+"materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
+them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
+both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
+potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
+consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
+which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
+existence.
+
+The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
+that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
+with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
+force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
+God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
+dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
+crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
+resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
+syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
+infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
+successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
+act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
+conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
+world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
+that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
+demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
+admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
+admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
+which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
+laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
+remain as they are.
+
+Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
+disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the _Hagiographa_, or "sacred
+writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar
+that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially
+in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and
+inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit
+utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that
+whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle,
+as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the
+latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and
+achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this
+statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more
+important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found
+that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much
+neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key that
+unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging
+between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will
+most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no
+equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
+volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
+be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
+value as in the first chapter of Genesis.
+
+In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
+translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--
+
+1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
+and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
+only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
+Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent
+system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally
+consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence
+"without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying
+inconceivably vast areas in space.
+
+2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
+suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
+of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
+evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
+epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
+"gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
+matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
+universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
+man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
+order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
+and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.
+
+3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
+the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
+great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
+rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
+stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
+for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
+firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
+Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.
+
+4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
+fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
+life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
+distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
+nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
+turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
+was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
+"guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
+this most remarkable genesis.
+
+5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
+which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
+explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
+either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
+and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
+law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
+in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
+would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
+Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
+ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."
+
+6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
+theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
+excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
+earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
+necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
+the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
+occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
+mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
+organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
+hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
+(except man) "after his kind."
+
+But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
+of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
+that of materialistic science:--
+
+THE BIBLE GENESIS.
+
+1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
+Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
+no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
+
+2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as _perfect_ of its
+kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs,"
+declared to be in themselves upon the earth.
+
+3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
+every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
+plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
+field "before it grew."
+
+4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
+bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
+therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
+firmament of heaven.
+
+5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
+every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
+which they appear in geological distribution.
+
+6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
+he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
+every other living creature.
+
+7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
+life," and he became a "living soul,"
+
+8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
+man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
+the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
+face of the earth.
+
+9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
+man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.
+
+10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
+the angels."
+
+
+THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.
+
+1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
+universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
+myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
+through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
+infinite duration of time to come.
+
+2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less
+_imperfect_ of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some
+underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual
+development from lower into higher organisms.
+
+3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
+agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
+its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
+at best, only a sort of _tertium quid_ between matter and motion.
+
+4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
+birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
+progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
+constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
+of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
+gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.
+
+5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
+creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
+constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
+organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
+genera, or species.
+
+6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
+respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
+up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
+until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.
+
+7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
+thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known
+moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the
+social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree
+only, not in kind.
+
+8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
+purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
+adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
+all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
+indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
+tiger, or they dominion over him.
+
+9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
+expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
+God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
+end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
+become endowed.
+
+10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
+than the apes!
+
+And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
+Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
+conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
+devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
+least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.
+
+But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
+as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
+represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
+implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
+_ZRA_, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis,
+from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica
+Sacra," first published in 1662:--"_Sparsit, asparsit, cum aspersione
+fudit, diffudit_," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally
+diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew
+word _ZRA_. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or
+tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which
+"seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.
+
+The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
+is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the
+"_diversa diversorum viventium primordia_" of Dr. William Harvey, were
+originally implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and
+biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught
+the doctrine expressed in his phrase "_omne vivum ex ovo_," but that of
+"primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
+in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
+more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
+receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
+into a living organism.
+
+The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
+vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
+from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
+unit--or whether it originates _de novo_, as the materialists assert, from
+infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
+particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
+hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
+certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
+basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
+indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
+be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
+hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
+necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
+effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
+conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
+trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
+rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
+materialistic dogma, _nihil ex nihilo_, would necessitate a like induction
+wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is
+manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
+seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
+the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.
+
+The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
+thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
+environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
+environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
+ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
+point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
+back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
+form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
+such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
+the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
+themselves.
+
+At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
+but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
+forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
+or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
+itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
+the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
+conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
+"primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
+whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
+everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
+new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
+wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
+point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
+knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
+theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
+a tiger in an Indian jungle.
+
+Teach us to know what nature _does_, not what she _is_; and whatever of
+"divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic
+"Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the
+"myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul
+of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors
+themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their
+inspiration.
+
+We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
+contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
+and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
+because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
+all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
+Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
+machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
+at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
+by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
+will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
+the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
+assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
+speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
+molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
+ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
+to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
+proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
+advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
+connection.
+
+The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
+growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
+seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
+forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
+domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
+never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
+our position, that the Bible Genesis contains _the true key to the mystery
+of life_. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be
+reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes
+of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as
+Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial
+bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more
+perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and
+the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the
+more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[3] The emphatic
+statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the
+earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below
+"specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement
+that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions
+favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the
+life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.
+
+And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
+thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
+there is functional activity; while a state, or _status_, is an incidence
+determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and
+its _status_--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first
+instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity
+dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply
+the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is
+begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very
+important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What
+this efficient cause _is_, is a question that awakens no responsive
+inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of
+consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it
+is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will
+ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them
+the first quantitive essence of life itself.
+
+We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
+life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
+their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
+founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
+the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
+_animus_ of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great
+central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual,
+eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all
+religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
+Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India.
+Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective
+blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely assailed and
+overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing
+and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the
+great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the
+slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration
+at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the
+dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room
+for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as
+"the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval
+mist," originally pervading the interplanetary spaces.
+
+We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
+Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
+experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
+purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
+the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
+after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
+investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
+against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
+whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
+"life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
+necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
+are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
+facts only, and the latter entirely on _pre_conceived and _pre_judicial
+notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
+objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
+the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
+themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
+potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
+must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
+theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
+God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
+heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
+of the universe:--
+
+  "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
+  Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
+
+The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
+science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
+household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
+more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
+dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
+for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
+represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
+the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
+industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
+number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
+gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
+controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
+statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
+scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
+has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
+achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
+
+Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
+science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
+this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
+materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
+why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
+of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
+slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
+more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
+Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
+to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
+refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
+man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
+
+When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
+much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
+Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
+between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
+and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
+primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
+whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
+arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
+shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
+thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
+maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
+span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
+no daring mortal could ever pass.
+
+Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
+necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
+construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
+"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
+as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
+would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
+continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
+the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
+manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
+advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
+of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
+organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
+foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
+either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
+this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
+variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
+substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
+differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
+re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
+exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
+potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
+abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
+and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
+
+The bridge will never be built.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Life--Its True Genesis.
+
+
+
+The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
+the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
+that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
+celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
+admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
+observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
+that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
+the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
+principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
+force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
+governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
+rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
+instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
+the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
+comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
+upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
+"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
+demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
+way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.
+
+In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
+fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
+the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
+streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
+along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
+wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
+life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
+flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
+spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[4] For like all living
+principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
+primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
+onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
+postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
+correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
+grand comprehensive _Datum_ on which all the objective, as well as
+subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
+upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
+"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
+"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
+Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
+raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
+and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.
+
+To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
+up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
+because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
+artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
+handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
+Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
+no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
+undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
+complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
+affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
+spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
+which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
+slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
+travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
+called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
+purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
+Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
+physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
+"Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
+action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
+that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
+as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
+were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
+field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
+opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."
+
+Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
+recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
+the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
+doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
+genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
+renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
+statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
+comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
+the command "to bring forth" was issued:--
+
+1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.
+
+2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, _the
+fowl of the air_.
+
+3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
+and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.
+
+4. _Let us make man in our own image_.
+
+And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
+with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
+Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
+This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
+paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
+crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
+the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
+post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
+life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
+the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
+writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
+origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
+geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
+written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
+Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the _Cosmos_ to escape him,
+would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
+was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
+and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.
+
+But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
+creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
+observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
+appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
+primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
+vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
+of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
+inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
+primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
+inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
+inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
+answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
+decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
+process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
+primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
+declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
+successfully entered upon by the Abbé Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and
+others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
+co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
+established by inductive methods.
+
+_Nihil ex nihilo_ is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as _omne
+vivum ex vivo._ That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least
+considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some
+vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
+manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
+and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
+greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
+two of a physiological or vital unit? [5] At all events, it is as
+impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other.
+And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible
+Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly
+without verification or proof.
+
+But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
+the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
+of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
+there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
+vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
+way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
+Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
+vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
+command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
+what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
+Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
+before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
+did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
+conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
+years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
+genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
+metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
+which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
+contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
+should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
+other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
+of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
+science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
+credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
+disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
+interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
+the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
+is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
+conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
+it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
+disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
+distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
+disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
+supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
+formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
+incredibility.
+
+It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
+inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
+we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
+interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
+translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
+--contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
+"mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand _questio
+vexata_ of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of
+all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (_i.e._
+each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
+physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
+formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
+hitherto occurring upon our globe.
+
+Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
+Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
+experiments of the renowned Abbé Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic
+assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by
+whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "_molecules
+organiques,_" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the
+_primordia viventium_ of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery"
+and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and
+Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever
+spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they
+all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible
+Genesis, _and all are explained by them._ We say _all_, with one exception
+only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this
+exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy
+vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He
+who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only
+a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And,
+breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, _he became a living soul_!
+
+Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
+without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
+chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
+Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
+yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
+defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
+so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
+awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
+primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
+myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
+the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
+Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because _you_ cannot
+annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
+compass of _your_ brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
+intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at _His_ sovereign and
+commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold
+of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit,
+and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words
+without knowledge."
+
+But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
+It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
+God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
+abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."
+
+What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
+power of God which operates (continuously operates) _to impart life to
+inanimate nature._[6] From the connection in which it here stands it means
+this, as in other connections it means the power which operates
+(continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like)
+in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving
+principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary,
+there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative
+now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor
+Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate
+nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its
+operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
+connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
+aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
+animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of
+mind.[7] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature,
+and a part not nature.
+
+Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the _ZRA_.
+the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
+thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
+own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
+commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
+forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
+first received its _baptism of life_ from God--in other words, derived the
+animating principle of life from the source of all Life.
+
+And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
+Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
+give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
+vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
+to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
+definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
+remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
+idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
+any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
+vegetal and animal life.
+
+St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturæ non quseritur
+miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
+Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
+that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
+for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediæval authority.
+What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
+such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"
+however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
+our modern scientists.
+
+And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
+definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
+vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
+allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
+living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
+hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
+uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
+to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
+not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
+own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral _plexus_, and
+Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
+and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
+_a priori_ induction will ever extend this line _or plexus_ to man. The
+developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
+will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
+up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
+his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
+downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
+archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
+and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
+nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
+Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
+and woof of their scientific formulæ respecting life, will never stand
+before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
+thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
+against them.
+
+Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
+life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
+whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
+his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
+this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
+_genetrix omnium viventium_, or the living _mother_ on whose bosom he
+shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
+beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
+not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
+principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
+forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
+forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
+apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
+and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
+grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
+_gramma_ coveted by his favorite game.
+
+And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
+against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
+to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
+which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
+behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
+will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
+the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
+infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
+But how about the preëxisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
+megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
+period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
+did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
+and we will answer it.
+
+But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
+all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
+matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
+modifications, combinations, etc.,[9] chemically as well as molecularly
+considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a
+mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the
+argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some
+one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.
+
+For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
+etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
+statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
+well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
+some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
+plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
+materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
+conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
+as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
+must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
+some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
+number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
+molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
+possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
+infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
+cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
+occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
+follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
+or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
+Intelligence" of the universe.
+
+Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
+era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
+their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
+more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
+for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
+concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
+possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
+essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
+All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
+an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
+were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
+theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
+or the first fungus-spore. [10]
+
+All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
+both plants and animals have _disappeared_ from the earth for the want of
+the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished.
+What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that they
+originally _appeared_ from the presence of these identical conditions,
+whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have occurred? We put
+this question not simply because the Bible Genesis asserts that "_out of
+the ground_ made the Lord God to grow" every plant of the field "before it
+was in the earth," as well as every herb of the field "before it grew;"
+nor because it declares that their primordial germs are in the earth; nor
+because it speaks of the earth as containing within itself the "animating
+principle of life." But we put it on the irrefragable logic of the
+materialist's own premises and conclusions. They may use other and
+different physiological terms from what we should care to employ, but
+their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force," their "highly
+differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing more than what
+we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital conditions," etc. Their
+preference for the terms they employ, over essential "qualities" or
+"properties" of matter, is entirely due to the obvious invalidity of their
+conclusions, except as their physical theory of life may help them out of
+an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more convenient term on which to
+allege the _de novo_ origin of life--its spontaneous manifestation in
+their experimental flasks--than any vital principle primarily inhering in
+matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to
+validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious
+force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In
+other words, theirs is the fallacy of _non causa pro causa,_ or that
+vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause
+of vital manifestation, and fastens induction where none is legitimately
+inferable.
+
+Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
+that in all life-manifestations there must be some preëxisting vital force
+or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can
+come into existence.[11] M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that
+organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to
+physical or chemical forces." The Abbé Needham is satisfied to formulate a
+"force végetative," so far as plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably
+falls back on vital force or energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique,"
+which is essentially inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations.
+According to the latter, the whole universe is an "_organisme absolu_"
+constantly endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all
+conceivable directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
+interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
+theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
+is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
+distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
+For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
+from all vital manifestation.
+
+An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
+of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
+transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
+and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
+conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
+solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
+among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
+of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [12] which
+merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover,
+day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But
+this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's
+speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution
+theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his
+"archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature
+adheres to perfected forms.
+
+Goethe accepts the doctrine of _vis centripeta_, beyond the influence of
+which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or
+variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
+variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
+inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
+not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned _by_ circumstances
+_to_ circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to
+the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he
+frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We
+should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after the Great
+Architect's pattern, _to_ circumstances, and is only varied _by_
+circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of variability. For
+the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal pattern, after
+which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals has been
+fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose mind, or
+rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
+archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this
+_Archeus_ pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from
+the mind of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but
+from the one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all
+living things were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that
+world "which," according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that
+is contained sensibly in our world."
+
+This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
+influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
+modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
+types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
+way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
+nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
+then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
+attribute to nature a _purpose_ to modify persistent forms under a law
+that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
+archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
+intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
+type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
+therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
+or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
+predetermining will or agency in the universe.
+
+Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
+thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
+character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
+before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
+effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
+would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
+itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
+materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
+one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
+reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
+and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
+entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
+ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
+co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
+personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
+obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
+not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
+spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
+fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
+ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
+angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
+worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
+ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
+other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
+machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
+language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
+and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
+majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
+iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
+Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
+two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
+should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
+inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
+screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
+greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.
+
+But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
+science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
+the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
+or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
+words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
+manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Alternations of Forest Growths.
+
+
+
+No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
+alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
+apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
+wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
+been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
+their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
+ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
+satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
+phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
+these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
+scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
+ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
+And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
+of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
+only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
+these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
+lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
+noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
+Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
+question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
+any very important new facts given.
+
+If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
+think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
+collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
+ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
+ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
+implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
+silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
+remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
+themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
+that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
+of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
+further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
+the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
+waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
+with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
+11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
+specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
+this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
+by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
+but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
+and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
+determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
+genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.
+
+Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
+treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
+to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
+species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
+the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
+over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
+centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
+belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
+again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
+have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
+causes; but, in many instances, _this explanation is not probable_." It is
+manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this connection,
+in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed" any other
+germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits that, in many
+instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the dissemination of
+seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the exploded notion that
+vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous instances where seeds
+have grown after lying dormant for ages in the earth." He further says, in
+the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while
+they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he
+is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain
+for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that
+they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether.
+But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of
+ancient Egyptian cereals, which are sometimes hawked about the country for
+two and three dollars a seed, and, in the same breath, accept the absurder
+theory that seeds may lie dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and
+most enduring woods will utterly perish and disappear in a few brief
+years, is wholly inexplicable to us, except as an hypothesis to force a
+conclusion, or to account for the otherwise unaccountable alternations of
+forest growths.
+
+But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
+seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
+entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would
+be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and
+other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr.
+Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by
+actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and
+thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils
+below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach
+them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may
+answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a
+nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the
+indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a
+like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly
+be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light
+of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are
+speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed
+that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such
+exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast
+into the fire and consumed to ashes.
+
+But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
+the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
+brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
+entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
+in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
+remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
+calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
+and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
+rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
+burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
+found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
+Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
+waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
+which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
+Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
+Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
+depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
+must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
+brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
+wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
+did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
+species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
+us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
+microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
+any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
+examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
+large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
+But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
+the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
+seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
+this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
+newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
+is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
+sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.
+
+It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
+hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
+neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
+oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
+entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
+the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
+while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
+"germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
+growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
+in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
+natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
+the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
+natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
+"vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
+"the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
+has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
+instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
+implicitly followed since.
+
+In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
+York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
+Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
+growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
+ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
+the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
+trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
+poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
+spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
+tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
+fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
+replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
+supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
+not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
+altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
+tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
+and growth.
+
+The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
+communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
+fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
+1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
+oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
+propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
+too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
+special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
+immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
+natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."
+
+In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
+storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
+was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
+that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
+"had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
+prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
+neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
+nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
+promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
+unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
+season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.
+
+In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
+the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
+before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
+alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and
+through forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was
+possible that their seeds could have been derived. One of these
+tornadoes the writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South
+Alabama, and he is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that
+the instances are rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean
+path of a tornado, through any of our primitive forests, has been
+succeeded by the same growth of timber as that borne down by the winds.
+Where the path of this ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine
+forest, a clean growth of oak was buttressed on either side by pine;
+and _vice versa_, where it swept an oak forest. And it is certain that
+the tornado, whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such
+discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine
+growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific
+theory or balk an unscientific one.
+
+Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
+years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
+was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
+been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
+had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
+taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
+deciduous, and _vice versa._ We have any number of well authenticated
+facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
+place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.
+
+Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
+which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
+swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
+without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (_Larix Americana_) may
+be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by
+the balsam fir (_Abies balsamea_), which may be probably caused by the
+partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree
+that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a
+period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
+extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
+state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
+manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
+soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
+accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
+for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
+that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
+considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
+granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
+in the interest of speculative parties.
+
+But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
+found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
+country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
+swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
+artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
+appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
+latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
+the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
+for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
+in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
+growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
+the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
+growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
+favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
+swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
+nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
+the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
+all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
+Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
+all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
+the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
+of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
+Bible genesis nowhere affirms.
+
+Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
+Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
+dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
+the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
+evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
+growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
+"seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
+stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
+the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
+genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
+locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
+his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
+conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.
+
+He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
+practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
+philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
+rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
+fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
+adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
+by an oak forest, _where there were a few oaks previously scattered
+through the woods to furnish seed._" This is a very cautious, as well as
+circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had
+his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor
+Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through
+the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into
+account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one.
+They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a
+proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His
+anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a
+pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify
+him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement
+as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of
+Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have
+found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the
+intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the
+localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have
+been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the
+shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No
+squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get hickory nuts, and
+few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and thinner-shelled walnuts
+are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is provident, but no more so
+than he is fastidious in the choice of his food. He never plants acorns
+except for his own gratification, and is never gratified with indifferent
+food so long as he can command that which is to his liking.
+
+In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
+necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
+inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
+indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
+fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
+correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded _by a
+spontaneous growth of trees of another kind._" In the sense in which he
+manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
+might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
+that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
+seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the _Acer_ family
+excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
+a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
+chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
+A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
+accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
+tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
+nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
+generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
+we advance in this work.
+
+Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
+unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
+operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
+adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
+in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
+called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
+almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
+Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
+is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
+spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
+mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
+following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
+places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
+etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
+expressed at the asking of the question."
+
+These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
+Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
+for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
+conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
+They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
+the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
+"spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
+with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
+meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
+conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
+trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
+lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
+facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
+presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
+to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
+distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
+native forest from which seed could have been derived.
+
+Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
+town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
+had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
+"yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, _where there was not a
+single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the
+place_." Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white
+pine, of which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory."
+He is greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
+readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
+by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
+Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
+them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
+caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
+might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
+grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
+provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
+locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
+have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
+and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
+Bible genesis.
+
+While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
+imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
+cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
+within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
+vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
+any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
+at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
+and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
+germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
+that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
+nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
+inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
+years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
+so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
+hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
+old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
+stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
+were laid.
+
+Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
+few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
+well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
+which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
+vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
+on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago
+(_circiter_ 1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding
+region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my
+grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It
+contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As
+the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this
+ground there sprang up a grove of white pines, covering the field and
+retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a
+single oak or chestnut tree;" and he adds, "_there was not a single pine
+whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to
+have been planted on this spot_." He supposes, however, that the "seeds"
+(pine cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought
+them up "within the limits of vegetation."
+
+As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
+that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
+and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
+forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
+covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
+Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
+the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
+idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
+with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
+time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
+fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
+oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
+many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
+the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
+succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
+hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
+that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
+intervals among the larger deciduous trees.
+
+Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
+that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
+gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
+once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
+where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
+which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
+of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
+different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps,
+_vice versa_. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a
+brief summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of
+the country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less
+well-informed on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says
+that in the region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871,
+"dense growths of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing
+rapidly;" but he omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to
+state the previous growths of timber, or whether there were any
+neighboring growths of poplar along the track of the burnt district from
+which seed might have been derived.
+
+Here are some of his more important statements:--
+
+"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
+up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."
+
+"At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
+deciduous trees, and _vice versa_."
+
+"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
+oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."
+
+"In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."
+
+"In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
+maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
+more of the last named than any other."
+
+This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
+simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
+that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
+"Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
+really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
+suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
+surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
+the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
+neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
+forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
+physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
+proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
+be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
+countries of Europe.
+
+It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
+New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
+the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
+pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
+without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
+absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
+soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
+ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
+and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
+the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
+often see a hazel coppice; after a time the cratægus, and finally the
+oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
+aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
+the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
+of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.
+
+He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
+timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
+from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
+Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
+wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
+immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
+noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
+very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
+pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
+produce nothing but poplars, _where none of that species of tree was
+previously to be found"_. But facts of a similar character are too
+numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
+authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
+germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
+appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
+them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
+passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
+circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
+plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
+occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
+physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.
+
+There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
+a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
+forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
+areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
+yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
+the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
+ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
+after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
+been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
+whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
+tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
+forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
+indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
+specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
+genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
+others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
+theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
+growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
+confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
+scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
+pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
+effectually turned on the sneerer.
+
+Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
+singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
+appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
+which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
+this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
+disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
+value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
+were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
+earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
+And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
+conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
+were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
+units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
+circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
+all candid and impartial readers will agree.
+
+Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
+theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
+that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
+meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
+position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
+to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
+little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
+will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
+had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
+hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
+vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
+is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
+only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed,
+_but twelve species of plants _ (not including grasses and sedges)
+flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."
+
+The attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
+meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
+by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
+in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
+their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
+fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
+soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
+of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
+their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
+changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
+England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
+the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
+open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
+aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
+for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
+seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
+beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
+for their more successful growth.
+
+No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
+centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
+obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
+bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
+obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
+she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
+eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
+guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But
+forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up
+in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages,
+or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the
+butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
+dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
+all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
+mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
+to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
+mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
+her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
+command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
+expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
+implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
+seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
+them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
+that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
+language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--
+
+      "Nature never lends
+  The smallest scruple of her excellence,
+  But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
+  Herself the glory of a creditor--
+  _Both thanks and use_."
+
+Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
+of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
+never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
+glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
+seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
+bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
+and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
+legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
+breast, and her "copy is eterne."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+
+
+
+Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
+of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
+place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
+unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
+trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
+insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
+plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
+explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
+small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
+which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
+provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
+these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
+in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
+coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
+may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
+plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
+until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
+scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
+to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
+have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
+when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
+vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
+conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
+fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
+
+This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we
+have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific
+path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on
+vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our
+cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the
+"ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in
+which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all
+their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are
+the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of
+storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of
+storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed
+back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it
+may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself.
+For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much
+more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned
+to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it
+quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from
+the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed
+mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.
+
+The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
+nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
+thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
+the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
+belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
+former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
+to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
+least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
+their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
+these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
+after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
+fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
+circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
+had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
+merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
+when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
+no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
+exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
+protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
+whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
+chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
+Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
+
+Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
+Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
+remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
+admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
+on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
+he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
+implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
+wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
+"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
+says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
+which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
+the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
+or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
+for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
+exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
+with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
+show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
+dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
+erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
+may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
+than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
+dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
+this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
+erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
+household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
+they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they _do_
+follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
+
+The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
+"Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
+indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
+extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
+after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
+Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
+together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
+at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
+lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
+connected with the case was, that _the raspberry seeds were recovered from
+the stomach_ (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society,
+where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
+circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
+provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
+the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
+conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
+would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
+
+But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
+comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
+years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
+raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
+Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
+kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
+were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
+one." This statement must be received _cum grano_. The Romans never used
+coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a
+battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
+was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
+taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
+might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
+soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
+very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
+particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
+the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
+posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
+for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
+that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
+recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
+the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
+well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
+in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
+
+All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
+about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
+record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
+stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
+seeds, as well as the _obolus_ in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be
+found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had
+withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the
+surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have
+obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for
+belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
+
+From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
+mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
+England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
+of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
+not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
+case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
+distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
+discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
+tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
+soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
+"Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
+there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
+buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
+other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
+wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
+wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
+trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
+or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
+bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
+of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
+seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
+of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
+
+Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
+alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
+fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
+circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
+the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is _Erechthites
+hieracifolia_, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its
+seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is
+not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds,
+and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
+survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
+burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
+any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
+heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
+of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
+no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
+their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
+seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
+those _grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
+southern hemisphere_, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in
+which they so promptly make their appearance.
+
+Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
+deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
+heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
+growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
+the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
+two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
+from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
+to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
+only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
+a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
+must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
+its place.
+
+The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
+nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of
+the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil
+where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but
+from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those
+taking advantage of environing conditions, just as _Bacteria_ or
+_Torultz_ spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots
+of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring
+directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living
+organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable
+depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the
+burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when
+there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from
+the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken
+their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural
+"gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account
+for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick
+bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in
+this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when
+white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds
+of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing
+in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any
+length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that
+when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are
+effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie
+grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and
+the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No
+seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found
+had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most
+powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make
+their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation
+did on the earth, not from seed, but from preëxisting vital units or
+primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
+necessary conditions for their development and growth.
+
+The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
+explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
+to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
+no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
+generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
+seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
+impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
+seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
+thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
+eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
+gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
+the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
+gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
+utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
+corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
+involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
+power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
+seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
+natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
+macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
+gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
+pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
+gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
+outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
+passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
+pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
+appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
+observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
+slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
+the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
+
+The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
+they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
+hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
+the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
+small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
+and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
+some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
+otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
+even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
+bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
+length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
+have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
+character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
+mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
+comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
+have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
+crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
+crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
+fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
+bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
+
+These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
+Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
+chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
+than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
+digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
+"natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
+"the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
+loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
+of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
+relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
+without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
+transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
+number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
+of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
+as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
+
+Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
+other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
+have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
+mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
+dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
+this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
+agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
+well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
+given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
+or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
+seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
+late civil war, a little leguminous plant (_Lespedeza striata_) sprang
+up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it
+came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of
+the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage
+plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this
+plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the
+phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities
+in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general
+appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not
+particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one
+southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they
+naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in
+those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not
+abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had
+the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive
+legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
+
+It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
+suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
+as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
+been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
+southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
+prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
+to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
+and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
+South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
+it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
+thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
+war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
+vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
+in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
+South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
+Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
+states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
+winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
+quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
+wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
+plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
+favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
+organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
+their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
+on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
+examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
+the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
+life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
+have named.
+
+This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
+"conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
+soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates,"
+"_molecules organiques_," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
+life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
+theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
+developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
+dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
+conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
+of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
+only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
+"molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
+from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
+two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
+with matter--_molar_ motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass,
+and _molecular_ motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its
+unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
+
+But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
+collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
+mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
+accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
+other words, it is simply a _process_ or _mode_ of action, and stands in
+about the same relation to matter as _growth_ does to a living plant or
+tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
+subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
+indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
+additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
+"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
+it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
+it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
+motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
+both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
+less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
+having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
+moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
+matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
+co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
+physical hypothesis of life.
+
+But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
+local fern (_Schizoea pusilla_) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
+affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
+of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
+at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
+ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
+ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
+Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
+south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
+north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
+appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
+thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
+the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
+half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
+will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
+of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
+known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
+not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
+hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
+vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
+high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
+another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
+respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
+the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
+mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
+governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
+manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
+globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
+appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for _Bacteria_ in
+the blood, _Torulæ_ in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological
+cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable
+"unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant
+forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of
+centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of
+affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis,
+because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but
+let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational
+life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force,"
+or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable
+to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they
+absurdly use these terms.
+
+It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
+question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
+seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
+theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
+east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
+respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
+this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
+the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
+changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
+theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
+directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
+plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
+"war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
+relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
+and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
+causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
+mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
+habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
+reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
+vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
+common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
+must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
+compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
+conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
+shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
+vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
+been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
+climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
+localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
+growth of local vegetations.
+
+And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
+seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
+regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
+these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
+vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
+units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
+determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
+resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
+seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
+as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
+given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
+not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
+chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
+likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
+any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
+of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
+soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
+judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
+failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
+experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
+subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
+less useful to man.
+
+But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
+As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
+nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
+out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
+of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
+no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
+life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
+inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
+fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
+they _might_ produce life _de novo_.[13] But the most daring physicist
+would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his
+knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to
+"molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon
+such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.
+
+It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
+in the appearance and geographical distribution of _fungi_, as universally
+obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it
+may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between
+certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive
+manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in
+assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
+fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
+classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
+as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
+other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
+necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
+essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
+Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
+obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
+form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
+make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
+them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
+about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
+necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
+development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
+burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
+to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
+commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
+part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
+
+Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
+moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
+which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
+found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
+certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
+of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
+their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
+from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
+nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
+from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
+grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
+disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
+and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
+disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
+mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
+develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
+To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
+different species of _Mucor_, for instance--for disgusting offal over
+decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
+degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
+creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
+
+We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
+testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
+etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
+of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
+spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
+go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
+apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
+depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
+beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
+select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
+the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
+direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
+conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
+environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
+atmosphere--the "_pater omnipotens Æther_" of Virgil, "descending into the
+bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great
+himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things
+of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that
+myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a
+cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the
+poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father Æther," and the earth as
+his "joyous spouse." But life, with its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and
+swift," has reached its highest conceptions in the mind of the poet, not
+in the speculations of the scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from
+many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a
+Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass,
+staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a
+Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of
+"molecular machinery" by the scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its
+manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe
+of all-potential matter and motion!
+
+Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
+spores of the large puff-ball (_Lycoperdon giganteum_), as well as those
+of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose methods
+of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced artificially. But
+the process by which their production is thus effected, is more properly a
+natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says
+(quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and
+fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse
+of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue
+productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they
+cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these cases, but the
+conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded by the branches
+of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became favorable for the
+development of truffle "germs," and they made their appearance just as
+mushrooms do in caves and other places, where artificial beds are made and
+chemically balanced for their development and growth. And the reason why
+they disappeared, after a period of ten or fifteen years, was simply
+because the proper nutriment of the soil was exhausted, and not in
+consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the growing trees. One
+uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of this much-coveted
+fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions obtain, they
+_appear_, and wherever these conditions fail, they _disappear_,
+notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
+soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
+truffle (_Tuber æstivum_) appears under beech trees, another form (_Tuber
+macrosporum_) under oak trees, and still a third form (_Tuber brumale_)
+under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change in soil
+conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among oaks,
+produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
+amounting to a specific difference in variety.
+
+The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
+one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
+horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
+cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
+over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
+time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
+ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
+governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
+whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
+In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
+come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
+its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
+the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
+as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
+Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
+in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
+seen by the required telescope.
+
+Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
+says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
+dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
+plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
+early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
+summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
+the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
+to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
+of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
+were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
+era. These primordial germs, or the _ZRA_ of the Bible genesis, must have
+preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
+spore-bearing cryptogam.
+
+M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
+great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
+at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
+oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
+conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
+oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
+All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
+connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
+the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
+all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
+development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
+fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
+connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
+case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
+remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
+micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
+parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
+from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
+parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
+occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
+than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
+springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
+spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
+endowed from the beginning.
+
+But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
+seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
+could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
+produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
+distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
+stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the _first_
+fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
+divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
+mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
+we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
+comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
+depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
+of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
+condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, _Nature_, as we
+half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
+solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
+ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
+radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
+baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
+idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
+choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
+field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
+her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
+breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
+proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
+life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
+soul-endowed man.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+
+
+
+Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S.
+etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of
+Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856,
+on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding
+Food," are the following:--
+
+1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its
+absolute creation, of which we know nothing.
+
+2. "But we assume each species to have been _created but once in time and
+in place_, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own law of
+reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws
+external to it.[14]
+
+3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate,
+since _any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but always
+fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc_.,
+
+4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates
+distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the
+heating rays."
+
+There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average
+rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in
+the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the
+hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several
+localities in which the different species of vegetation make their
+appearance.
+
+But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific
+creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount
+value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and
+restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from
+the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs.
+"Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or
+restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to
+doubt that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now,
+in nature.
+
+The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created
+at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds,
+is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or
+scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an
+experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first
+bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste
+over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants
+peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance,
+not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have
+nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because
+a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from
+the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we
+have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man,
+artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of
+plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did
+millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of
+these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or
+circumstances.
+
+But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of
+progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified
+offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original
+ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical
+faith, but never of experimental proof. "_Entia non sunt multiplicanda
+præter necessitatem_" is an old and well-approved maxim, applicable alike
+to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the innumerable
+crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is produced
+without the necessary conditions on which its production depends.
+"Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest
+meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course
+of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and
+animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements.
+As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of
+development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without
+which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological
+sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and
+inevitably produced.[15] And this law is just as dependent on necessary
+vital conditions as vital manifestations are dependent on a physiological
+law. There must always be this reciprocal dependence and relationship
+between conditioning causes and effects. Whenever and wherever the
+necessary vital conditions exist, the physiological law takes effect, and
+the requisite vital manifestation is witnessed. And this is no doubt as
+true of animal as of vegetable life.
+
+The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of
+which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora.
+Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;
+
+  1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from  0° to 15°.
+  2. " Tropical       "      "         " 15° "  23°.
+  3. " Sub-tropical   "      "         " 23° "  34°.
+  4. " Warm Temperate "      "         " 34° "  45°.
+  5. " Cold           "      "         " 45° "  58°.
+  6. " Sub-arctic     "      "         " 58° "  66°.
+  7. " Arctic         "      "         " 66° "  72°.
+  8. " Polar          "      "         " 72° "  82°.
+
+These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with
+reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like
+division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems,
+extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our
+equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at
+their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they
+respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the
+next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we
+ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak
+of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the
+elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm
+temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all
+latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.
+
+They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant
+life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted
+for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances,
+modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the
+highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight
+exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that
+the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should
+hereafter be extended.
+
+Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation
+quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical
+mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate
+zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer
+classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are
+marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey
+gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant
+zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of
+plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind
+can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these
+statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the
+different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of
+vegetation peculiar to each of them.
+
+The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance
+in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein,
+and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could
+only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other
+conditions of that extensive zone.
+
+The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are
+characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while
+retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less
+rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are
+peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and
+most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do
+not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in
+both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain
+systems within the equatorial regions.
+
+The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and
+general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc.,
+exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a
+greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery
+and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels,
+and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these
+zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.
+
+The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of
+the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the
+other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and
+plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the
+corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of
+deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths,
+cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked
+characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent
+grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more
+extensively into varieties.
+
+The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm
+temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency
+is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are
+more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also
+abundant in grasses.
+
+The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social
+conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe
+and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is
+sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering
+herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.
+
+The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation
+generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.
+
+The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be
+entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most
+extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire
+vegetation.
+
+There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting
+plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the
+elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may
+appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.
+
+From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested
+on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before
+answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions _have_
+been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the
+distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on
+climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and
+isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one
+important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that
+of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but
+once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of
+its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences
+of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original
+plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and
+that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts
+of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones
+where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they
+attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than
+satisfactory.
+
+The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as
+reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray,
+in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work
+Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he
+was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not
+take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication,
+the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the
+individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."
+
+And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his
+associate's observations, in considering the very point here under
+consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his
+idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in
+individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in
+discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view
+is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with
+the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of
+accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or
+animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their
+appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and
+under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.
+
+Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions
+favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these
+conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its
+appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but
+simply the presence of "conditions"--the _pro_vision of man harmonizing
+with the _pre_vision of nature. In the same way the "Japan clover" made
+its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over the southern
+states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of plants, but
+the presence of natural conditions.[16]
+
+The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be
+arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general
+facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly
+to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and
+not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast
+intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others
+would require us to believe. Take the case of the _Schizoea pusilla_ of
+the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing in
+similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their
+antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this
+plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long
+time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that
+it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to
+New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these
+"specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would
+have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both
+localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored;
+and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the
+fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formulæ,
+must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite
+child of nature" that she condescended to create it _twice_ "in time and
+place," instead of only _once_. It is a poor rule, they may say, that has
+no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.
+
+Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief
+in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more
+rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high
+authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine
+currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have
+played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even
+across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the
+appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of
+miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than
+the presence of _Bacteria_ or _Torulæ_[17] in different organic
+infusions? If the vital units of these _infusoriæ_, are present in
+experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually admits, why may not
+the vital germs or units of this _Schizoea pusilla_ have made their
+appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand and New Jersey, at
+the same or different periods of time? If Professor Gray regards the
+microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical forms in
+inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of nature,
+then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove that
+these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which she
+has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the
+question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of
+argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly
+operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation
+not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and
+hence not supernatural.
+
+But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are
+led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the
+sub-arctic zone, and _vice-versa,_ and even beyond the equator to the
+sub-antarctic zone, and still _vice versa_. Before proceeding to consider
+the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called glacial
+periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or considering
+the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state their position
+in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and concisely as we know
+how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the generally accepted one
+of the evolutionists, as well as most of the present scientific world. As
+the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet theory of evolution depended
+on the satisfactory solution of this vexed problem, it became necessary
+for him to give his best and entire mental energies to the gigantic task
+which was, by universal consent, assigned him. The reader shall see how
+admirably the thermal equator is crossed by Mr. Darwin, with his vast
+swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and other plants, forest trees,
+anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild animals, such as would
+gladden the heart of the "great American showman" beyond the most
+extravagant comparison.
+
+The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve,
+was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and
+cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the
+corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was
+any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of
+how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will
+give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be
+charged with misrepresentation.
+
+He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and
+more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions;
+and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of
+the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the
+equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot
+lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and
+sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this
+period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres
+gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living
+on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former
+homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms
+returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms
+would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if
+sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms
+on the mountains of Europe.
+
+"In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its
+turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere
+rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the
+equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the
+mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These
+latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes,
+leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with
+them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their
+mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the
+same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of
+the intermediate tropical regions."
+
+We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for
+plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us
+in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure,
+even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.
+
+But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the
+strength of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr.
+Darwin must rest:--
+
+1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial
+epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however
+few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the
+maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.
+
+2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the
+sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a
+constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface,
+being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion
+or perihelion.
+
+3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the
+earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any
+glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not
+altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time,
+and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to
+the other.
+
+4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends
+continuously and permanently much farther north than 80° or 81°. Mt.
+Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only a
+few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was
+traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some
+ten or twelve degrees further north. [18]
+
+5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75°,
+what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the
+north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope,
+below 60°, a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The utmost
+limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time,"
+conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to
+55°, or about the northern boundary of England.
+
+Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes
+of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further
+south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the
+sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking
+of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an
+ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that
+the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to
+the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a
+moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during
+the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this
+continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude.
+Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only
+push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm
+temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the
+Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of
+Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.
+
+Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less,
+when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the
+isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been
+the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape
+the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have
+flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the
+Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded
+through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation,
+that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our
+northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.
+
+For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern
+ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll
+has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms
+down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme
+northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have
+managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent
+habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent?
+Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it
+ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible
+of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only
+to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these
+forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern
+hemisphere.
+
+They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more
+before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that
+distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly
+in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been
+constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must
+accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period
+indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them.
+Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the
+line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more
+years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican
+states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled
+Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central
+American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a
+point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the
+northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the
+universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's
+calculations.
+
+To have accomplished this grand glaciatorial feat the North Pole must have
+donned some twenty times the amount of ice now about both poles of the
+earth, and so changed the earth's centre of gravity as to have inundated
+every foot of land on its habitable surface. But if this terrible
+catastrophy had been avoided, and some of our extreme northern forms had
+forced their way through the Isthmus into the lowlands of Columbia, they
+must have done so at their greatest possible peril, even if they had
+reached the base of Old Mt. Tolima in advance of the thermal equator, now
+fleeing in dismay before the southern Ice-monarch, with all his
+isochimenal hosts in mad pursuit of their invaders. And if these
+adventurous northern forms had succeeded in ascending Mt. Tolima, they
+could never have got down again, with the assistance of forty glaciations.
+
+But we can imagine Mr. Darwin promptly snatching his pen to show the
+stupidity of these northern forms in not climbing Popocatepetl or some
+other lofty mountain in Central America or Mexico, on their retreat before
+the still advancing thermal equator. But how this would have helped them
+to cross the geographical equator, we fail to see. When Mr. Darwin, and
+the eminent corps of geologists and physicists accepting his solution of
+this "vexed question," can make a "warm term" south _succeed_ a "cold
+term" north, we shall have no difficulty in solving the problem ourself.
+But, unfortunately, the two terms--the cold one north and the warm one
+south--are simultaneous in occurrence, and the same causes which forced
+these northern invaders into the tropics, when they followed _after_ the
+thermal equator, would have driven them ignominously back again _before_
+it. The climbing of mountains would only have prolonged their disaster.
+For after the glaciation north comes the glaciation south, and unless our
+cold temperate zone were pushed down beyond the geographical equator, none
+of its living forms could ever have reached the corresponding zone in the
+southern hemisphere.
+
+But as this "migration theory" is one of paramount importance to modern
+science, and especially to "Darwinism," [19] distinctively so called, let
+us, at the risk of repetition and tediousness, propose a scientific
+expedition for the better solution of this problem. To do this, we propose
+to cut loose from our stupid predecessors, the plants and animals, and
+invite Mr. Darwin and some of his more distinguished European
+contemporaries, not omitting Professors Gray, Winchell, Yeomans, and some
+few other American admirers of his, to accompany us on a fresh expedition
+from the warm and cold temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south, _purely in the interest of science_. To make it certain that the
+time fixed upon for this "expedition" to start, will not escape their
+attention, we will state what many of them already well know, that the
+present eccentricity of the earth's orbit is very low, being only 0.0168,
+and that, in the year of our Lord 851,800, it will reach its next superior
+limit, with a few intervening oscillations of such minimum value as to
+render it hardly worth our while to start before that time.
+
+We shall be obliged, of course to invite our distinguished European party
+to join us on this side of the Atlantic, as their own narrow and
+contracted continent furnishes no proper field for determining the problem
+in question. We shall insist upon one condition only: "_That they shall
+never leave the warm temperate zone in which we shall set out on our
+expedition, except to pass halfway into an adjoining zone as is the habit,
+at times, with plants and animals_." This condition will have to be
+rigidly observed, otherwise our expedition would be of no scientific value
+to future generations. As we shall have plenty of time to provide the
+necessary outfit, we will appoint Mr. Darwin purveyor-general of the
+party, and hold him responsible for any misadventure.
+
+We will arrange for the expedition to start in the early autumn of the
+year of our Lord 831,800, or about twenty thousand years before the earth
+shall reach its next superior limit of eccentricity,--all of us eager, of
+course, to brave the climatic vicissitudes of the journey, and to solve
+the "great problem of the ages," which is, to determine how the gigantic
+elephantoids of the Eocene period managed to cross the thermal equator,
+and pass into the present arctic regions of our globe.
+
+As "the king never dies," so the old southern Ice-monarch will be
+succeeded by the young northern one, at about the period named. We shall
+then have a decided advantage over our predecessors, the plants and
+animals, in their journey southward, since we shall know the exact route
+they took, and need only follow it. Presumably they had no such
+information, nor had they either chart or compass to guide them,--a
+circumstance which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently taken into account in
+predicating intelligence of his favorite pedestrians. Besides, these
+vegetal and animal forms had one difficulty to encounter which we shall
+not experience. With all the northern forms driven down into the Central
+American states, they must have been sadly crowded for room, especially
+near the Isthmus. The social conifers must have monopolized all the more
+favored sites on the mountain sides and tops, while the humbler denizens
+of the forest must have contented themselves with still more limited
+quarters. The more impatient animals, for lack of necessary forage, must
+have crowded through the Isthmus only to be driven back by the tropical
+heats to their proper isotherms.
+
+But our warm temperate zone is now moving southward, and our scientific
+expedition is moving with it. The northern Ice-monarch has resumed
+absolute sway, and our aphelion distance from the sun has increased some
+tens millions of miles. We have, in the mean time, moved down to the line
+of the Gulf states, and are deploying to the right in order to make a
+triumphant entry into Mexico. Mr. Darwin is daily consulting the
+isochimenals, and is confident that our northern ice-cap will equal Mr.
+Croll's highest expectations. The news finally reaches us that the Gulf
+stream has turned its course southward, and is now pouring its immense
+treasures of heat into the South Atlantic, if not turning the African
+"horn" and washing the far-off Australian coast. This fact greatly
+increases the enthusiasm of our European party, and they hasten forward
+into the sub-tropical zone, almost "violating conditions" in their haste
+to enter the tropics.
+
+At length, we crowd the narrow passages of the Isthmus, and the glory of a
+warm temperate climate bursts upon our view in the Columbian states, of
+South America. _The expedition promises to be an entire success_. At
+least, Mr. Darwin thinks so, and he is now the Sir Oracle of our party. We
+deliberately enter the lowlands of Columbia, and make ready to ascend the
+sub-tropical mountains--those formerly equatorial--where the "great
+scientific problem of the ages" is to be demonstrated. But we are
+measuring time by almost _Sirius_ distances, and vast geologic periods
+sweep by without apparent record. The northern ice-cap has been a
+prodigious one, crowding us nearly down to the geographical equator, with
+the advantage we have of appropriating some five and half degrees of the
+sub-tropical zone.
+
+But the year Anno Domini 851,800 finally rolls round, and the maximum of
+the earth's ice-cap is reached. Old Mt. Tolima looms up in the distance,
+and we soon ascertain that its height is sufficient for all scientific
+purposes. Its summit displays a glittering ice-cap, and we are certain to
+find the proper isotherm by climbing its umbrageous sides. We accordingly
+make haste to reach its base, and get there not a minute too soon; for the
+young southern Ice-monarch has stolen a march on the thermal equator, and
+is driving it irresistibly back to its old quarters. His march northward
+is a continuous triumph and ovation up to 55°, and the heart of Patagonia
+is made glad by his near approach. True, the white gates of commerce are
+closed about the Horn; but that is no concern of these wild Patagonians.
+The aggressive Britton is driven out of New Zealand, and that is another
+source of joy to the savage breast. Tasmania would extend a gladder
+welcome than all to the Ice-crowned monarch, but alas, not a drop of
+Tasmanian blood runs in human veins! Cape Good Hope has now a sub-arctic
+climate, and the heart of the wild Kaffir and Zulu rejoices that the
+sceptre of "perfidious Albion" is broken.
+
+The thermal equator at length reaches the base of Mt. Tolima, and hastens
+northward to the Isthmus, and thence to Hondurus and New Guatemala, where,
+by sheer force of exhaustion, it comes to a halt.
+
+But, as the equatorial zone extends fifteen degrees both ways from the
+thermal equator, its southern limit now rests on the geographical equator,
+and accordingly encircles the base of our "mount of refuge." We are now up
+this mountain some sixteen thousand feet above the equatorial lowlands,
+with the sub-tropical, tropical, and equatorial zones between us and the
+possibility of our further migration southward, without violating the
+express conditions imposed at the outset of our expedition.
+
+The fact soon stares us in the face that we have been no more successful,
+in our efforts to cross the thermal equator and pass into high southern
+latitudes, than the stupid plants and animals before us; and Mr Darwin's
+faith in high mountains springing from equatorial lowlands, disappears in
+jest and derision as we all good-humoredly agree "to break conditions,"
+and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and
+New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve
+itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness,
+hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great
+commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of
+exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The
+Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by
+us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the _Herald_, of the
+date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific
+expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "_The Great Wild-Goose
+Chase after the Thermal Equator_"--presenting one of the most humorous
+bits of sensational pleasantry ever given to the American public.
+
+But an apology is due the staider reader for the seeming levity of this
+narrative adventure. The exposition of Mr. Darwin, though widely accepted
+on both sides of the Atlantic by the scientific world, has seemed to us
+too trivial for serious reply. If we have leaped over vast periods of
+time, it makes no difference with the argument. So long as the thermal
+equator, or more properly the equatorial zone, or any part of it, lies
+between the warm or cold temperate forms, whether plants or animals, and
+their point of destination in the southern hemisphere, they can never
+migrate thither, any more than the right whale of the arctic seas can swim
+the equatorial oceans. Nothing is gained by going out of the way to climb
+mountains, except to hopelessly retard the return of both plants and
+animals to their native zones. If we have not demonstrated this fact to
+the reader's fullest comprehension, it will be useless for him ever to
+write a Q.E.D. at the end of any proposition.
+
+It is true that some eminent astronomers and physicists hesitate to
+accept the theory that these glacial epochs are due to the eccentricity
+of the earth's orbit. But the argument favoring it is well fortified and
+ably advanced, and if we add to the astronomical considerations involved,
+the physical proofs of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, caused
+by the excessive accumulation of ice about either pole, and the probable
+shifting of the Gulf stream to a southerly direction during the glacial
+period north, it is difficult to resist the conviction that the real
+cause of glaciation has been suggested in this theory. With all the ice
+now accumulated about the south pole transferred to the north pole, it
+would make an ice-cap of over thirty miles in thickness at the pole, and
+one sloping in all directions southward to about 60°. This accumulation,
+it is claimed, would so change the earth's centre of gravity as to cause
+all the equatorial warm waters to flow southward instead of northward, as
+they now do.
+
+This would certainly seem to be a most wonderful provision of nature, as
+well as one strongly calculated to impress the human mind with the belief
+that an Infinite _Pre_vision lies behind all possible _pro_vision, whether
+witnessed in the heavens or in the earth, in astronomical or physical
+phenomena. Everywhere we see infinite perfection, combined with infinite
+beneficence, in the adaptation of means to ends. Nothing runs to
+waste--all things are conserved for use.
+
+But in all the outspoken grandeur of the universe, there is nothing so
+grand, in exhibition at least, as the simple faith of a child, that "He
+who watereth the hills from his chambers," and "causeth the day-spring to
+know his place," will watch over the trustful little sleeper during the
+darkness and silence of the night.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+The Distribution and Premanence of Species.
+
+
+
+Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the
+advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while
+remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones,
+says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United
+States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--_i.e._ Eastern North
+America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference apart, we
+find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our
+distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe,
+thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general
+physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and
+other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all
+the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great
+similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the
+astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity,
+had it been found to exist.
+
+Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
+plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
+zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
+different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
+and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
+therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
+known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
+all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
+Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
+alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
+States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
+Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
+pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
+correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
+same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
+of all the mountain systems of the globe.
+
+These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
+geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
+objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
+friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
+climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
+that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
+ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
+"coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
+insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
+bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
+the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
+the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
+mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
+as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
+Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
+attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
+hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
+seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
+
+When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon
+these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There
+is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the
+rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the
+lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and
+far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away
+from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be
+chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if
+all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have
+been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross
+the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions
+of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and
+explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of
+plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.
+
+The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the
+explanation wanted. It explains not only _why_ these alpine flora appear
+where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also explains
+all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the foregoing
+chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the earth
+responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine harebell
+is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it wears. And
+so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads and
+sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never grew
+before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang therein
+"its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the black alder
+will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far its current
+may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the supply of
+natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate her as
+"instinct with music and _the vital spark_."
+
+If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of
+nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert
+that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her
+grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find
+out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to
+accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with
+our chronic neglect of what nature _does_, is the great scientific
+stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that
+certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from the
+_absence_ of "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the
+reverse of this undeniable proposition, and agree that the _presence_ of
+necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their
+appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal
+law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the
+universe itself?
+
+For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical
+distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British
+Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As
+early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in
+his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in
+connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of
+the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution;
+while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in
+his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in
+Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our
+botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense
+plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have
+given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed
+vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and
+scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of
+any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to
+question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the
+array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon
+the audacious questioner.
+
+But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any
+longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or
+fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never
+meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well
+in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without
+knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many
+superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and
+diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough
+daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice
+them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the
+more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the
+truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional
+grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out
+the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole
+business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a
+delight instead of a burden.
+
+But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown,
+or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come
+from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms
+come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical
+rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent,
+for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that
+all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is
+dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now
+only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his
+"necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all
+animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial
+conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine
+Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in
+the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may
+appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds,
+fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about
+100° C., and that _Bacteria, Torulæ_, and other infusorial forms, making
+their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from morphological
+cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital organism, but
+from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere present in the
+organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth into life whenever
+the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper incidences of
+environment occur.
+
+We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring
+forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as
+unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to
+such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary
+telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north,
+or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions
+occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a
+country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in
+which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the
+general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees
+peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in
+the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution
+of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to
+latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall,
+soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.
+
+But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for
+the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing,
+if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data
+for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the
+evolutionists have been spinning for us.
+
+Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials,
+more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year.
+We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only
+to find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we
+advance, or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our
+vast mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas
+thoroughfared and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits
+signs of becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in
+her demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of
+facts as the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future
+recognition. She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is
+likely to become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due
+to her methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out
+her hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to
+return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to
+adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna
+and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all
+indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of
+time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in
+character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to
+require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production
+and reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn
+her species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power
+above her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was
+brought forth."
+
+From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and
+wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to
+the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached
+out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as
+avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized
+forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so
+remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may
+be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties
+of the _Sequoia_, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs, poplars,
+hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions during
+the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown on the
+spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain
+undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a
+warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized
+forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively
+showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have
+worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in
+genetic value.
+
+There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical
+forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm
+inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial
+periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the
+earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formulæ, we can have no
+conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period
+named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest
+glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there
+have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can
+be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening
+maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It
+is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible
+glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who
+differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any
+other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his
+theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an
+interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and
+nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the
+present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have
+undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it
+require to work out even _one_ of Mr. Darwin's many evolutional changes?
+
+The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora
+and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be
+distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the
+varieties of the _Sequoia_ family, the oaks, beeches, firs, hazelnuts,
+etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be difficult to
+classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they cannot be
+placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled out of
+representative types. But why should our speculative botanists insist upon
+these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative forms" of
+which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has given us
+the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be claimed is
+that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions of years
+ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not
+repugnant, alliances, can produce
+
+            --"Streak'd gillyflowers,
+  Which some call nature's bastards."
+
+it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her
+alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of
+propagation. If she produced the _Sequoia gigantea_, or the great redwood
+tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous period, she
+has propagated it ever since according to her own loving methods, and it
+is idle to talk of the _Sequoia Langsdorfii_ as being the original
+ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of the sequoias.
+How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz that these
+trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in
+individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can
+never bear the fruit of the other.
+
+Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of the
+_Quercus_ or oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of
+ingenuity to show that the various members of this old and
+ancestrally-knotty family have all descended from two or three of the
+hardier varieties. He arrives at this conclusion from a geographical
+survey of what he would call the "whole field of distribution," and
+"the probable historical connection between these congeneric species."
+But science should deal with as few probabilities as possible,
+especially where experience furnishes no guide to certainty, and only
+the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never predicate
+probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some
+likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or
+otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we
+determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so
+much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in
+the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be
+absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a
+determinate judgment. The _Quercus robur_ may furnish the maximum test
+to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other
+variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M.
+De Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than
+twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded
+to be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long
+as the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one
+twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to
+determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished
+in the past.
+
+Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other,
+M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has
+governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has
+only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still
+speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may
+show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed
+to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because
+they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from
+the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like
+engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity
+of _idea_, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of the
+_individuorum similium_ in Jessieu's definition of species. But similarity
+must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere exists in
+nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the rarest
+possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million will be
+found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees of the
+same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and branching
+of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated covering,
+_Et sic de similibus_ everywhere, and with respect to every thing. Nature
+is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of similarity and
+tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the Platonic
+conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only a
+supplementary truth to that of _de similibus_. In the eye of the soul all
+objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as
+consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material
+universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[20] into
+the smallest possible number of similar or identical forms, may be all
+well enough to accomplish scientific classification; but the productive
+power of nature can never be limited by these mental processes of our own.
+
+The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently
+enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in
+speaking of the _Quercus robur_ and its probable origin, says that it is
+"traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks
+eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant
+shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest
+descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the
+Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats
+on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after
+the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The
+spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia
+was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring
+subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of
+the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which
+spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when
+conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no
+difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical
+conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the
+speculative botanist.
+
+Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they
+"have come into existence coincident both in time and place with
+preëxisting closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as
+individual localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of
+original progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily
+determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species
+preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place,
+their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by preëxistence.
+The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the
+appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a
+closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is
+lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to
+progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species
+preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than
+the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of
+observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic
+connection between the different species, or between even the same
+species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that
+advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization
+depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the
+dispersion of seeds.
+
+The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not
+depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of
+specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the
+possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of
+conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually
+concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection
+with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual
+distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of
+preceding conditions." [21] And he is forced to this conclusion by his
+virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged means of
+seed-distribution.
+
+The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and
+animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what
+they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can
+any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis,
+which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what
+forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is
+impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of
+thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel
+wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we
+make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties
+existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they
+were brought about by artificial processes.
+
+These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been
+practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in
+nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the
+distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend
+towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from
+other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies,
+resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens
+and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of
+species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced
+by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving
+tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of
+man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the
+category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In
+view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such
+as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders,
+tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard
+Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea
+of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the
+result of man's agency.
+
+Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to
+undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists
+and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among
+individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the
+absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the
+fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary
+limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These
+differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the
+question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature,
+rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new
+races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than
+certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease.
+But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to
+origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.
+
+The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the
+oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the
+Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that
+no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three
+million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million
+years, except that the _Sequoia gigantea_ may drop out, from the vandalism
+of man or the next glacial drift.
+
+M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique én Norwege," says "that each
+species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has its
+own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric
+gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture
+and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the
+physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary
+hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the
+point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without
+the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There
+was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth
+than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first
+instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.
+
+Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense
+of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees
+of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography,
+climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and
+tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that
+institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with
+a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern
+forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which,
+though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their
+leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be
+distinctly understood, is no alteration _produced_ by climate. Trees are
+made for and not _by_ climate, and they keep their characteristics
+throughout their whole range, which with some extends through a great
+variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we suppose he means
+by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and sub-arctic.
+
+In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of
+the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United
+States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and
+extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important
+elements--in fact, the _most_ important--is wanting in the tables before
+us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of specimens were
+obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have occurred, although
+it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He had his materials to
+work upon, and may have done the best that any one could with them. And
+yet it is just as important to know at what _elevation_ a particular tree
+grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes from a sub-arctic
+or sub-tropical region.
+
+But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with
+most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and
+trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other
+in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward
+from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We
+have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief,
+if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional
+grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He
+wants it distinctly understood that trees are made _for_, and not _by_,
+climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a
+localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by
+climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved
+throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and
+migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it
+would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or
+the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us
+neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the
+climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during
+their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.
+
+With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is
+undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made."
+They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring
+them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow
+now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of
+the ground made the Lord God _to grow_" every plant of the field, and
+every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the
+want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions,
+the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and
+growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest
+extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the
+climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees
+modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true
+physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearance
+_in_ climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without
+material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor.
+_Why_ they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we
+assume a preëxisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our
+subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth to
+bring them forth, after _his_ spirit (the animating soul of life) had
+moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of the
+earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more
+comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the
+perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled.
+Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that
+it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human
+soul. Besides, we find _it true in fact_, since the earth is constantly
+teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law impressed
+upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--
+
+              "If this faith fail,
+  The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,
+  And earth's base built on stubble."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+
+
+
+The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human
+reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to
+determine. It furnishes no objective _datum_ on which to predicate
+attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as
+the coordination of the _vis vitae_ in nature, which is an undisguised
+form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes
+as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It
+admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical
+proposition. To say of life that it is "a coördination of action," might
+be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise,
+crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an
+illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication,
+analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and
+apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process
+of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and
+uniformity of expression, in designating as a _power, property, force_,
+etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and
+profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one
+answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of
+all life in the universe.
+
+Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases,
+borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "_Jupiter est genitor_,"
+"_Jupiter est quodcunque vivit_," etc., which, although uninspired
+utterances, strike their roots deeply into the _terra incognita_ of
+consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a
+paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman
+defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted,"
+he was as conclusively indulging in the _argumentum in circulo_ as if he
+had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as
+luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of
+Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement _x-y_ the antithesis of _x+y_--one
+of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed
+in the formula.
+
+To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the
+argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing
+enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in
+logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real
+definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of
+reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular
+phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern
+materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the
+"potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated
+differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the
+part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a
+whimsical enough way of putting it.
+
+According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full
+of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But
+this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once
+received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it
+is idle to predicate the _vis vitae_. For the great bulk of our globe is
+made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which
+neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the
+slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or
+plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the
+world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the
+chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the
+principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In
+whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in
+respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of
+empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems,
+than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward
+survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond
+this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to
+which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.
+
+The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abbé Spallanzani in
+modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few
+others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the
+inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its
+elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing
+germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller
+than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond
+the construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that
+the germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the
+earth, or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to
+bring forth."
+
+Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything
+which exists is referable to the _vis vitæ_--to non-corporeal, yet
+extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's
+bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with
+a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of
+the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory
+so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible,
+ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the
+entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of
+elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes
+with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it
+is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely
+numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm:
+everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own
+spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a
+germ, the totality of things."
+
+But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of
+being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism"
+landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living
+things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they
+make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature
+still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that
+this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable
+experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis
+of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent
+materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm
+rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in
+this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a
+scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely
+fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great
+advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena
+occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now.
+It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the
+panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so
+deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation
+in these directions.[22] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least
+conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope,
+any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by
+the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a
+scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena,
+and satisfactorily accounts for them all, whether it originally came from
+Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a matter of comparatively slight
+moment, so far as the scientific world is concerned. At least, it would
+seem so to us. But to talk of the _de novo_ origin of "living matter" as
+the result of the dynamic force of molecules--themselves concessively
+"dead matter"--is to indulge in quite as fanciful a speculation as the
+advocates of the panspermic hypothesis have ever ventured to suggest.
+Professor Bastian is forced to go back of his infusorial forms and
+fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from which he admits they are
+"evolved." But why evolved? Does not the principle of vitality lie back of
+the pellicle, as well as the fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he
+that the extremest verge of microscopic investigation has been attained,
+in what he is pleased to designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is
+a very potential word, and no one may yet know what boundless stores of
+absurd theory and metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![23] He admits
+that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can have
+nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic
+organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise
+into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin,
+that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in
+and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both
+animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in,
+or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution,"
+for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the
+developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree,
+lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or
+the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this
+developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of
+ancestry to be traced anywhere.
+
+This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the
+Darwinian _plexus_ squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen and
+Tréviranus agree that the infusoria met with have never presented similar
+characters when they have been encountered in different infusions; nor
+have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different portions of it
+have been _exposed to the incidence of different conditions_. The
+slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the materials employed,
+are invariably accompanied by the appearance of different organisms--these
+being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and unaccompanied by any of the
+familiar forms." Other writers of equal eminence in this field of
+investigation have not only observed the same characteristics, but
+encountered the same difficulties in classification, from the very great
+diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms. So great is this
+diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that little certainty
+or value can be attached to the classifications already made. Even
+Professor O.F. Müller, after he had convinced himself that he had
+discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a single
+genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut them all
+down to mere modifications of one and the same species.
+
+We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of
+emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of
+different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The
+presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically
+averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of
+"conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital
+phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the
+mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of
+any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected,
+it will produce _some_ form of life; not because it contains this or that
+morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100° C--that to which
+it is experimentally subjected before microscopic examination,--but
+because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the required heat-test
+or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible by heat as by
+glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the proper
+conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in either the
+quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion, is, as these
+eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the appearance of
+different forms of life, just as the slightest change in soil-conditions,
+such as that produced by the presence of one species of tree with another
+in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the appearance of another and
+altogether different plant, as well as truffle tuber.
+
+But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to
+combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we
+refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its
+complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme
+simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in
+the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is
+formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements
+that take place _in invisible colloidal molecules_--a process which is
+essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived from
+lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded
+definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a
+hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all
+materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no
+such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed.
+There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resulting
+_from_, not _in_, the _vis vitæ_, or the elementary principle of life in
+nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in abundance. This
+materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as a generic one
+even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed that the
+"proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of Professor
+Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. Müller, the "bioplast" of Professor Beale,
+etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in name. They are
+mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which exhibit the first
+active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size from the one
+hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second of an inch in
+diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks of
+semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous
+layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they
+were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder
+supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is
+the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the
+plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the
+first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome
+of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on
+earth.[24]
+
+But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter,
+any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move,
+pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs
+with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the
+microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as
+essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or
+megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper
+response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the
+marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or
+classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter,
+we can never predicate _vitality_ of it, any more than we can predicate
+_intellectuality_. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater
+incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter." These
+qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature, not
+to insensate matter. To assert that life results _from_ "certain
+combinations and rearrangements of matter," and not _in_ them, is utterly
+to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them together
+that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an object of
+perception. Without the _vis vitæ_, or some germinal principle of life,
+lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of matter," and
+determining the movements of their constituent molecules, there could be
+no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a correlate of a
+force without the actual existence of the force itself. [25]
+
+The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive
+structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living
+organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is
+endowed with the property or power of producing life _de novo_, or, as
+Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living matter"
+which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but whether they
+die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and more potentially
+endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those following their diagnoses
+to determine. They further claim that the same law of vital manifestation
+obtains in organic solutions as in the structureless mass they call
+"protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed with the same potentiality of
+originating life independently of vital units, or _de novo_, as they more
+persistently phrase it. But why speak of _unfolding_ "new-born specks of
+living matter?" "To unfold" means to open the folds of something--to turn
+them back, get at the processes of their _infoldment_. It implies a
+pre-existing something, inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a
+germ, what is this pre-existing vital something which their language
+implies? Is our scientific technology so destitute of definitional
+accuracy that they cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without
+committing half that number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born
+specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by
+sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian,
+should trip in this definitional way.
+
+"Living matter," _born_ of what? Certainly not of _dead_ matter. Death
+quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the grave.
+It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of matter in
+which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly ceased, if,
+indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use language
+with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter," whatever the
+phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken nothing. The
+pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is there any birth
+from unquickened matter. Animals _bear_ young, trees _bear_ fruit, but
+force _produces_ results. What then quickens protoplasmic matter? Neither
+vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are to credit the materialists.
+They would scorn to postulate such a theory, or accept any such absurd
+remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is rather "molecular force"--a
+physical, not a vital unit--that gives us these "new-born specks of living
+matter." [26] This is what they would all assert at once, in their
+enthusiasm to enlighten us on a new terminology.
+
+But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the
+subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic
+force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in
+the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived.
+And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond
+microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of
+either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than
+that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is
+going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence
+adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living
+organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one
+is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this
+subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his
+antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and
+deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of
+molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole
+controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the
+visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated
+sky-mist" beyond it.
+
+All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic
+matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain
+forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life:
+But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher,
+more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether
+unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital
+unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These
+primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the
+microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains
+as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative
+hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist
+is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any
+advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and
+the other the synthetic method.
+
+This is the materialistic argument covering the _de novo_ origin of living
+organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they assert, that
+these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or vital units,
+than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is, come from
+pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is overlooking all
+generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of action. Crystals
+are inorganic matter which _form_, do not _grow_. They are mere
+symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are produced by some
+law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of their
+constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no beginning
+or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric solids, they
+remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic, not
+functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of
+crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us.
+Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation,
+not of mere aggregation.
+
+But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the
+materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still
+insist, between the preëxisting germs of crystals and plants--or the only
+difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles of
+matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing diversified
+forms and structural changes than the more highly favored vital particles,
+such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the plastide, etc. The one
+represents mere crystallizable matter, the other the more complex
+colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of producing a much
+greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they concede, end here. But
+the difference is world-wide when we come to processes--the true
+experimental test in all classification. Crystallizable substances
+_crystallize_--that is all. They pass into a fixed and immovable state,
+and mostly into one as enduring as adamant; while colloidal or albuminoid
+matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no fixed forms--only those that
+are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so marked a feature, in respect
+to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the
+more distinctive name of "ephemeromorphs," in place of _infusoria_. But
+all these primordial forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with
+a solitary crystal. Everywhere the statical unit _forms_, the dynamical
+unit _grows_; the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one
+solidifies, the other opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the
+embrace of eternal silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and
+makes nature resonant with praise.
+
+Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain
+microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo
+in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental
+tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of algæ. They attribute
+their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation of
+filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the
+latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes
+constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic
+tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of
+molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary
+conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or
+appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating
+either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these
+materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this
+connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in
+which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals,
+in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living
+organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular
+formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would
+expect to encounter from them.
+
+M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that
+he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms)
+_at will_, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably
+true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as to _his_
+(M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field
+with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to
+do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to
+plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, and
+_vice versa_, then he might be said to have produced corn _at will_. And
+so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce
+one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by
+any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life
+in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that
+without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as
+complete in one form as another,--
+
+  "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
+  As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."
+
+All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the
+production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of
+nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing
+chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental
+flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the
+action of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and
+if he studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much
+the laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.
+
+Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls
+"new-born specks of living matter" are produced _de novo_, that is,
+independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life
+implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life
+with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as
+plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively
+shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks.
+But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal
+under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by
+experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one.
+His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk about
+_de novo_ production is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were it
+possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed, seed,
+underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with just as
+diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the gigantic
+conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance again, and
+some plants might drop out of the local flora; but the _Pater omnipotens
+Æther_ of Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the
+earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body, in all the
+prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[27]
+
+But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the
+right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are
+anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they
+resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks,
+they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in
+saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more
+satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even
+Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they
+thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in
+countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his
+accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the
+experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is
+a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital
+unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat.
+Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of
+such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is,
+that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy
+and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific
+explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs"
+primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions,
+and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But
+in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip
+in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.
+
+The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it
+conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural
+forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or
+inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system
+presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms
+of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular
+crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will
+forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine
+Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change
+itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from
+eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living
+types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless
+crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In
+this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline
+argument of the materialists has its value.
+
+The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of
+their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting
+statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions
+that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living
+organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions,
+nor should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the
+validity of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If
+they insist upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a
+crystalline "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they
+are effectually estopped from denying the presence of vital units in
+dynamical aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction
+that the process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one
+case, eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn
+round and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and
+certain, but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms.
+If vital units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units,
+statical units, and morphological units, should fall into the same
+categories of judgment.
+
+A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists
+and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in
+attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by
+his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases
+necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "_the
+continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations_." This
+definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of
+Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the
+phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them,
+fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any
+other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious
+formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand on it, but only
+in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all living things,
+are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number of little boxes,
+one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of all contains the
+germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was hardly a legitimate
+characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of "continuous
+adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box adjusted to the
+external relations of another. The definition is really that of a piece of
+working machinery--any working machinery--and was designed to cover Mr.
+Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by molecular force.
+
+But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations
+to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the
+upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration
+of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely
+external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its
+external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of
+causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the
+characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the
+distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its
+hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and
+electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all
+showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or
+relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life,"
+according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an
+automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to
+external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor
+Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these
+automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment
+of their internal to their external relations is continuous.
+
+The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" encouraged Professor
+Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: "Life," he
+says, "is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of
+growing by selection and interstitial appropriation of new matter (what
+new matter?) which then assumes similar qualities, of continually varying
+in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M),
+and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions
+of its own substance."
+
+It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this
+definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best
+aid him by grammatically analyzing its structure. And,
+
+1. "Life is capable of growing." We are glad to know this. As a vitalist
+it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back
+seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We
+let its "unstable collocation" pass for what it is worth, and stick to our
+grammatical analysis.
+
+2. "Life grows--is capable of doing something." This assurance positively
+encourages us.
+
+3. "It grows by selection and interstitial appropriation." This is still
+more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we
+feel, is increasing in potentiality.
+
+4. "By appropriation it enables _new matter to assume similar qualities
+to old matter_." This makes us more confident than ever; we take another
+step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is getting to
+be almost a "potentiated potentiality," to adopt the style of
+materialistic phrases.
+
+5. "It causes matter _to continually vary in composition._" Bravo! we
+unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most
+comforting assurance. Life is assuredly getting the upperhand of
+Matter (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere "undiscovered correlate
+of motion"--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with
+it--throws it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more
+steps forward.
+
+6. "Life is capable of self-multiplication"--has almost a creative
+faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of "bravoes," and,
+stepping boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to "throw
+up the sponge," take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new
+definition of "life."
+
+But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his
+own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that
+all these attempts to define life as a non-entity only, tend to keep up
+the demoralizing idea that it is an actual entity. We entirely agree with
+him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the
+definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees
+this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on
+Ephemeromorphs: "Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of
+which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively
+useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and,
+what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an
+independent entity."
+
+It may be objected that our grammatical analysis of the professor's
+definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should
+cover a "living thing," and not "life" as an abstract, term. Our reply to
+this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is
+simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that
+his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other,
+either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition
+entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able
+pathological anatomist of the London University college is a "living
+thing." He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is
+capable of growing, by "selection and interstitial appropriation," in
+reputation at least, if not in the direction of "an independent entity."
+His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the
+ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal
+manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional
+labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea
+that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a
+London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or
+the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not
+in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His
+assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the
+phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.
+
+Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism
+cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any
+more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of
+gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing
+organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the
+universe (call it the will of God, gravitation or what you may) must have
+existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either
+advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over
+effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the
+phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To
+say that there can be no _manifestation_ of life without an organism is
+true; but to assume that the vital principle which organizes is dependent
+on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be the
+lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that
+cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental
+processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying
+the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.
+
+"Plato lived." He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant
+of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have
+looked upon as "the temple of God," and all the world would have
+recognized as a god-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek
+chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
+All agreed in this. And yet it was not the _habitat_ but the _habitant_
+that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest
+enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was
+the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling _Archeus_, presiding
+over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic powers
+therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even
+Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this,
+with all that his new terms "ontogeny" and "phylogeny" may imply. When
+potential life passed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it
+was not the pabulum that assimilated the man, but the man the pabulum. If
+this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case
+of plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the
+phenomenal manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a
+cabbage-stalk. In other words, if the animating principle of life--or, as
+the Bible has it, the "animating soul of life"--is not what manifests
+itself in material embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor
+Haeckel mean by his new term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines
+of descent in all organic beings?
+
+If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether _mal posé_. Pabulum
+is nothing without a preëxisting "something" to dispose of it. It is not
+so much as a jelly-mass breakfast for one of Professor Haeckel's
+"protamoebæ;" for if it were served up in advance, there would be none of
+his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it, much less any of
+his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in her "hand-book of
+cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch your hare. But our
+ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the hare and the curry, in
+serving up his pabulum to the "protamoebæ." The improvident pabulum
+"evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like, is eviscerated by them,
+as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life, therefore, begins in the
+tragedy of Mount Cithæron, it is to be hoped it will end in the delights
+of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+
+
+
+The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
+seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
+not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
+their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
+super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
+that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
+heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100°
+C--212° F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially when
+the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of fifteen or
+twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the light of all
+the experiments which have been made in this direction, there is some
+doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many, if not
+most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100° C, there is little
+or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more tenacious of
+life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is equally
+unquestionable.
+
+M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
+capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
+of 120° to 125° C. (248-257° F), while the same spores entirely lose their
+germinating power after an exposure for half an hour or more to a slightly
+higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on "The Action of Heat
+on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the proceedings of the Royal
+Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are capable of resisting the
+action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300° F, although exposed
+therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however
+diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question
+in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the
+seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible
+"germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth itself.
+
+We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
+materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
+they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
+no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
+by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
+between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
+conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
+other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
+obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
+Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
+protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
+in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
+Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
+any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
+homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
+give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
+soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
+any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
+character of the infusoria appearing therein.[28] The cells are living
+organisms springing from vital units, and can no more manifest themselves
+independently of these units than life can manifest itself independently
+of an actual organism. And they make their appearance in the proper
+environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its primordial germ or
+vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the soil. Everywhere
+the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the plant or tree
+precedes the natural seeds it bears.
+
+This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
+vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
+vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
+single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
+living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
+verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
+as we may into the _arcana_ of nature in search of exact scientific truth,
+and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
+propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
+and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
+inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
+predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
+or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
+Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
+we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
+universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
+all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
+infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
+such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
+as a vehicle of thought.
+
+To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
+may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
+metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
+without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
+operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
+intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
+things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
+unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
+the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
+God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
+successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
+if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
+outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
+insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
+conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
+the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
+outside of it.
+
+But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
+overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
+mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
+uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
+the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
+greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
+that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
+an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
+any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
+"We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
+attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
+universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
+themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
+overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
+one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
+other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
+yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
+completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
+which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
+therein, originally came.
+
+But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
+scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
+will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
+God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
+universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
+the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
+independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
+space, or time independently of eternity. [29]
+
+According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
+essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
+all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
+modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
+were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
+that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
+whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
+law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
+order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
+the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
+that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
+manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
+exhibited in scientific formulæ. The higher and more satisfactory
+induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
+made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
+till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
+organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
+point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
+give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
+causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
+which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
+potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
+necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
+inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.
+
+Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
+who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
+position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
+our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
+a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
+in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
+once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
+a universe
+
+  "Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."
+
+But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
+life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
+universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
+positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
+before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" _in tandem_, that
+the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
+induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
+of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
+to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
+reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
+mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
+nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
+almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
+although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
+proportions of that scientific toy.
+
+Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
+matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
+countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
+different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital
+unit" can be _evolved_, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
+"primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
+can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
+chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
+nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
+is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
+multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
+that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
+confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists
+upon drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads
+of living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
+earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
+organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and
+vegetal world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the
+identical language we here use.
+
+And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
+grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
+can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
+vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
+unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
+point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
+microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
+units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
+insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
+crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
+beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
+know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
+development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
+the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
+knows nothing--we know nothing.
+
+Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
+now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
+phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
+exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
+a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
+studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
+of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
+that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
+fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
+tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
+specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
+undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
+Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
+but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
+knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
+beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
+reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
+contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
+He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
+glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
+distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
+vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-_unit_ and
+the dog-_unit,_ instead of falling back on his bioplastic spinners and
+weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing workers of the
+one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is far more
+rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict scientific
+methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to a single
+direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.
+
+There is a world-wide difference between the dog-_ego_ and the man-_ego;_
+but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
+bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one
+master-_ego_ as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall
+differentiate this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they
+shall work. Not a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed
+by the one head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts
+determine nothing, direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as
+obediently as a galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate
+movements, all molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic
+force, are the work of the one vital webster, or principle of life,
+within--that which shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is
+true from the first or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ,"
+until the real occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic
+weavers, and lies down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines
+its own structural form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to
+the slightest impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The
+occupant of this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers
+after another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of
+woven texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the
+same _physical_ dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for
+his master, carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in
+the chase, gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home,
+exhibits the same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to
+sleep, dreams of the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to
+engage. This continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty
+years of physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen
+times over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
+undifferentiated "dog-unit."
+
+Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
+fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
+bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
+sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
+led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
+expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
+cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
+one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
+only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
+as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
+conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
+re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
+producing it _de novo_ have not yet been ascertained, nor is it likely
+they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction between
+crystallizable matter and living substance.
+
+And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
+destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
+germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
+environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
+or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
+composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
+adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
+developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
+true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
+morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
+constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
+doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
+forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
+spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
+prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
+the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
+nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
+into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.
+
+In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
+recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
+at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
+ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
+have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
+certain small fishes of the _Cyprinidae_ and other families, have made
+their appearance therein.[30] Nobody has thought of stocking these
+standing pools of water with the fish in question, nor has there been any
+surface overflow to account for their presence, nor any other apparent
+means of transportation, if we except the fish-catching birds, and they
+generally swallow their food in the water or on the nearest tree to the
+point of capture. Any theory accounting for the presence of spawn is,
+therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have traversed hard clay
+deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to make their appearance
+in these waters. The only possible explanation of this class of phenomena,
+and they are by no means infrequent, is to be found in "favoring
+conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are primordial
+manifestations of life, and such as would have made their appearance in
+any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under the same
+favoring conditions.
+
+And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
+cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
+grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
+principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
+another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
+of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
+May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
+countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
+in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
+those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
+vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
+persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
+present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
+detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
+dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
+grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
+his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
+Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
+time, is not the question. It is the _fact_ of vital growth that we are
+after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as well
+as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with sturdy
+old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all _vital_ law--"has her
+seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world."
+
+Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
+life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
+constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
+contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
+completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
+nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
+and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
+and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
+invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
+organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
+elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
+in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
+living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
+assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
+and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
+mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
+living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
+little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
+principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
+a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
+using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
+demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
+intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
+unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
+the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
+having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
+mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
+life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
+may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
+soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
+fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
+embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
+"dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."
+
+Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
+theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
+beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
+of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
+organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
+except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
+over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
+the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
+reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
+Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
+matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
+once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
+intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
+anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
+or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
+an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
+tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
+of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
+"dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
+fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
+endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
+limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
+ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
+sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
+nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
+Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
+been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
+highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
+force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
+bound to except.
+
+Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
+may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
+the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
+all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
+classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
+matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
+between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
+germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
+least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
+statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
+bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
+mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
+merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
+cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
+microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
+cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
+tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
+matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
+view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
+vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
+physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
+performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
+assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
+species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
+very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
+structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
+own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
+these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
+well as meaning.
+
+The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
+is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
+millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
+Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
+biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
+comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
+specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
+each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
+like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
+together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
+and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
+appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
+was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
+direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
+_in_ all living organisms, not _from_ them; directing Professor Beale's
+"bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of necessary
+plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first instance;
+observing no developmental processes by which one form of life laps over
+upon another, and following no order but that of universal harmony in the
+Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for existence, even among
+the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and the smallest and
+weakest must give place to the largest and strongest everywhere, and _vice
+versa_, as Time, the greatest of all rodents, gnaws away at the mystical
+tree of life. But in every living organism, from the lowest and simplest
+to the highest and most complex, all bioplastic spinners of filamentous
+tissue, all plastide weavers of membranous or spun matter, all epithelial
+bobbin-runners, and other anatomical helpers and workers, perform their
+respective tasks under the special supervision we have named, that is,
+under the higher unit of life. They all work for the advancement and
+well-being of the higher organism of which they form a component and
+necessarily subordinate part.
+
+The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
+and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
+from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
+evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
+wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
+far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
+mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
+accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
+other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
+not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
+carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
+and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
+made _his_ happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
+equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
+upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
+direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
+shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells.
+
+But decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale,
+although one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is
+that which makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have
+already referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
+altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
+half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
+vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
+the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
+and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
+Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
+something--a sort of _tertium quid_--between living and non-living matter.
+But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his carmine
+solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts, inferentially at
+least, that all other matter, in any and every living organism, is "dead
+matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no matter is living in
+any vital organism which has not been assimilated and built up into living
+membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case of man) to his will,
+as well as performing the autonomous functions of plants and the lower
+animals. For all these membranous tissues are innumerably thronged with
+bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the purposes of obedience to
+man's will, or of performing any autonomous function, but simply to supply
+the tissues with the necessary nutrient matter to make up for the constant
+waste that is going on in a healthy living organ. This waste is very much
+greater than has heretofore been supposed, so that the man or animal of
+to-day may be an entirely distinct and separate one, considered
+materially, from that of a year or more ago. And this averment would have
+a decided advantage over Professor Beale's, since, in meeting a friend, we
+might be certain that four-fifths of him at least was alive, while the
+other one-fifth was industriously at work to keep him alive, instead of a
+stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be, upon the street. Besides, it
+would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving
+themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale
+virtually does in the argument.
+
+The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
+life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
+exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
+are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
+weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
+plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
+song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
+and brilliant _roulades_, as if the little vocalist had caught its
+inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
+now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
+occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
+dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
+to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
+chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
+interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
+looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
+ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
+threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
+weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
+nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
+any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
+suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
+hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
+weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
+music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. _Where_ it is, not
+man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
+uplifted by inspiration, that--
+
+  "The soul of music never dies,
+     Nor slumbers in its shell;
+  'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,
+     And thence returns to dwell."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+
+
+
+Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which
+have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an
+"undiscovered correlative of force." Those who have the reputation of
+being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm
+of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly
+contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to
+eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of
+Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens
+where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its
+glory, this "undiscovered correlative of force," which they have indicated
+as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.
+Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles
+us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were
+they to define life as an "undiscovered force" simply, their definition
+would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in
+precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor
+metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never
+answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the
+success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this
+"correlative" of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since
+they are so chary of informing us themselves.
+
+A "correlate" of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal
+relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses
+nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relationship, such as
+father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.
+As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this
+particular force stands in some sort of relationship to the other forces
+of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the _material_ forces of
+nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relationship is
+what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the
+universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed
+relationship as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital
+force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or
+sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relationship, is not stated. The
+scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is
+to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to _x_ (the vital or
+unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and consequents
+together, and eliminating the value of _x_, we may mathematically obtain
+the value of vital force.
+
+But to eliminate the value of _x_ is what troubles them. Herbert Spencer
+has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any higher
+correlation than "molecular force;" nor can he definitely inform us
+whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he
+manifestly regards their relationship as constituting either a very
+attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the
+value of _x_, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and
+gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly
+contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in
+scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular
+force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not
+demolished, this machinery, in his recent treatise on "The Mystery of
+Life," we will spare it any further blows, and proceed to the
+consideration of "molecular force."
+
+Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us
+definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon
+to use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of
+"molecular attraction," or that force acting immediately on the
+integrant molecules or particles of a body, as distinguished from the
+attraction of gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it
+comes to ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to
+molecules, such as have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must
+feel our way with caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or
+rather of their materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather
+force, that is in them.
+
+It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a "molecule" is
+the smallest conceivable quantity of a simple or compound substance, as an
+"atom" is the smallest conceivable quantity of an element which enters
+into combination with other elements to form material substance. For
+instance, the smallest conceivable quantity of water is a molecule, while
+the smallest conceivable quantity of either of the two elements of which
+water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore,
+there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And
+since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may
+contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which
+lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest
+forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural
+alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter,
+and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man,
+knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into
+unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre,
+and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the
+general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on
+the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the
+actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest
+hypothetical data. It is the office of "molecular force," if there is any
+meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by "molecular attraction," to
+conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.
+
+If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man
+must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks
+and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended
+to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war
+with the principal phenomena of life, and should be classed with the other
+undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as "the
+fictions of a mechanical imagination." The truth is that these much abused
+and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in
+nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that
+inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a
+devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of
+quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at
+once seek quiet and loving companionship with kindred molecules, and
+retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from
+their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or
+constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living
+dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as
+perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be
+imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold
+of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery
+and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination
+of the molecules.
+
+If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about
+time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter,
+motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the
+multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for
+recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing
+the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional
+value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and
+vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their
+several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not
+emancipating language from the gross thraldom into which their "molecular
+machinery" has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the
+force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of
+fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less
+impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and
+things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences,
+coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable
+chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions
+of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and
+foot--under the one explanatory head of "force-correlation." We protest
+against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe,
+even if it were practicable under scientific methods.
+
+But Professor Tyndall denies that "molecular groupings" and "molecular
+motions" explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating
+life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[31] And it would be
+difficult to cite a stronger and more determined materialist as authority
+on the point we are considering. He says: "If love were known to be
+associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the
+brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as ignorant as
+before, as to the cause of motion." But there is no proof that the
+molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary for
+keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the brain
+itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a state
+of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been
+exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of
+consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there
+can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one
+set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules,
+as seen in the object glass of the microscope, there is no absolute
+certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any
+life-manifestation, as heretofore assumed. Some quite as well defined
+forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to
+predicate vitality of them.[32] These infinitessimal and constantly
+varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth part of an inch
+in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may owe their
+oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations, and even
+their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes than
+those strictly "vital." And it should be borne in mind that their actual
+movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as their real
+dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic infusions only,
+they are presumably vital organisms rather than fomentative or mere
+filamentous yeast-manifestations.
+
+Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place
+under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that
+the "primordial cells" possesses in any degree the characteristics of a
+"machine," nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the
+character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to
+them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He
+says: "They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the shells
+scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which
+the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the
+cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted."
+This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional
+office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's "formed matter."
+The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and
+simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.
+Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial
+cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-shells have
+been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come,
+both the cells and shells, from the preëxisting vital units, or
+determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement,
+without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent
+tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only
+favor its manifestation.
+
+But some of the materialists claim that what we call "vital units," or
+invisible, indestructible germs,[33] are at best only "physical
+relations;" that they have nothing more than a hypothetical existence,
+without any independent recognizable quality justifying our conclusions
+respecting them. But may not this identical language be retortively
+suggested in the case of their "correlates of force?" What more than a
+hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm to get rid of
+all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a feature in
+their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have shown in the
+verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of cause and
+effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical aggregates, and
+even assign absolute identity of attributes; but when it comes to
+dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial identity only, and deny
+the presence of the law altogether.
+
+Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in
+controversy. In speaking of his "plastide particles," Professor Bastian,
+the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says:
+"Certain of these particles, through default of _necessary conditions,_
+never actually develop into higher modes of being." Here he makes the
+absence of "necessary conditions" the cause of non-development, while he
+stoutly denies that the presence of such "conditions" give rise to the
+development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he
+speaks of the elemental origin of "living matter" as "having probably
+taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when
+such matter was first engendered." But how his "sum-total of external
+conditions," acting upon _dead_ matter, can "engender" _living_ matter, is
+one of those "related heterogenetic phenomena" which he does not
+condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that he
+gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of
+life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.
+
+To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of
+this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon
+the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all
+life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be
+no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards
+structural development, but only external conditions acting upon "dead
+matter," in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or
+undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped
+stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the
+complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their
+integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous
+entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as
+well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements
+should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous
+complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life "engendered from
+dead matter" in the material universe.
+
+For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more
+resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the
+happening by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the
+"fortuitous concourse of atoms;" now it is the "fortuitous aggregate of
+molecules." By what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have
+dropped out of their scientific categories, and the molecules have been
+advanced to their commanding place in _absolute accidentalness_, is one
+of those unassignable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We
+can only account for it on the supposition that they have all become
+worshippers of that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn
+of Amalthea and plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of
+language and other much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable
+knack at disposing of them.
+
+The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two
+conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary
+environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.
+Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning
+incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see
+that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by
+merely substituting "molecular force" for "vital force," in the
+explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do
+take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary
+plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not
+dependent on the vital principle _as it acts_, rather than on the
+molecules _as they act_,[34] The higher force should always subordinate
+the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other processes, of nature. It is
+the vital principle that differentiates matter--the aggregate of
+molecules--not matter differentiating the vital principle. No "molécules
+organiques" can ever differentiate an ape-unit into a man-unit, any more
+than Professor Tyndall can fetch a Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an
+ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a man-unit, eternally a man-unit.
+
+Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed _unit_
+as "_une idée dans l'entendement de Dieu," _ (to use a better French
+expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off their
+own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that
+"life exists," and that it has existed from all eternity _as possible_
+in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic
+science is disposed to butt its head against this impregnable
+proposition, it can do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may
+happen to the inconsiderate head.
+
+For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as
+there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search
+and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the
+forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in
+the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they
+descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions
+of life, or passed upward and outward, in _Sirius-_distances, to the
+irresolvable nebulæ, where other and perhaps brighter stars might burst
+upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still enormous
+fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same. Wider
+and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the stellar
+swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the
+uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and
+Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of space,
+the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the
+world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished
+the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and
+hangeth the earth upon nothing--"_holdeth back the face of his throne and
+spreadeth his cloud upon it_."
+
+What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small
+specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call "living matter," or, in
+the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming masses which
+we call "dead matter," who shall say that "the secret places of the Most
+High" are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of God first moved
+through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all
+matter, there was not imparted to it that "animating principle of life" of
+which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting
+itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set
+aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological
+expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for
+scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their
+specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and
+molecular theories of life.
+
+But speaking of the higher forces as subordinating the lower, suggests
+that there should be something more definitely explained regarding the
+hypothesis of "differentiation," on which Mr. Herbert Spencer hangs so
+much of his mathematical faith in the true explication of vital
+phenomena. The term "differentiation" is not so formidable as it might
+seem to the general reader at first sight. As applied to physiological
+problems it should have the same determinate value, in expressing
+functional differences, as in the higher operations of mathematics.
+Nothing can, of course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things
+differentiate each other, even when functionally allied. The actual
+coëfficient sought is the difference effected, in functional value, in
+one of two independent variables. For all formulæ in differentiation are
+constructed on the hypothesis that only one of two variables suffers
+change. The differential coëfficient has yet to be determined which shall
+express the developmental changes in two variables at once. When,
+therefore, we attempt to extend the formulæ of differentiation to plant
+and animal life, we are confronted by a very formidable difficulty at the
+outset--the impossibility of determining an invariable coëfficient for
+any two variables. Besides, all attempts at differentiating an ape-unit
+into anything else than an ape-unit would be as impossible as to multiply
+or divide cabbages by turnips, or sparrows by sparrowhawks. Such
+divisions would give us no quotients, any more than their
+differentiations would give us a coëfficient. Physiological
+differentiation will, therefore, never help us out of fixed species or
+nearly allied types. We can bridge no specific differences by it. In the
+differentiation of the horse and the ass for instance, the superior blood
+will predominate in the preservation of types, and even the mule will
+kick against further differentiation. Nature would so utterly abhor the
+practice as resolutely to slam the door in Mr. Spencer's face, if the
+obstinacy of the mule did not kick it off its hinges.
+
+And nature would be quite as intractable in the case of
+"force-correlation," another of Mr. Spencer's redoubtable phrases. This
+term is quite recent in its application to animate objects, nor has it
+been long applied to inanimate. It is claimed to be a recently discovered
+force, and is one that the materialists have seized upon as the Herculean
+club with which to smite all vital theories to the earth. Its meaning, so
+far as it has any, is not difficult to get at. The simplest way to explain
+it, however, is the best. The reader is to understand that when he rubs
+two flat sticks together, the heat thereby engendered is not the result of
+friction, as all the world has heretofore supposed, but that the amount of
+force expended in rubbing the right-hand stick against the left-hand
+stick, is, by some law of versability, not over-well defined, transferred
+to the two sticks, and gets so entangled between their surfaces that it
+can only reappear in another and altogether different kind of force. When
+it leaves the hands and passes into the two sticks, it is, as the
+materialists assert, vital force. But as no force can be annihilated, the
+conclusive assumption is that it still exists somewhere. All of it, in the
+first place, went into the two flat sticks, and, when there, _ceased to be
+vital force._ Some of it disappeared, of course, in overcoming the inertia
+of the sticks, but the bulk of it became entangled with the superficial
+molecules of the two sticks, and reappeared as _heat_--another name for
+molecular force.
+
+This is what is meant by the "differentiation" of vital force into
+molecular force, and _vice versa_. But by what process of rubbing, under
+this law of versability, molecular force can be reversed, or
+differentiated back into vital force, Mr. Spencer has not condescended to
+inform us. The simple truth is, and the materialists will be forced to
+admit it in the end, that there is no verification of this theory beyond
+that of mere force-equivalence. For instance, it has been experimentally
+determined that a certain amount of fuel expended in heat is equivalent to
+a certain amount of mechanical force, not mechanical _work_, as M. Carnot
+puts it. For force is not expended in work until it is actually generated,
+and the amount generated, not that expended in work, is the real
+equivalence of the heat produced from fuel.
+
+Another problem is presented when it comes to determining the amount of
+generated force necessary to run a piece of machinery which shall
+accomplish a given amount of mechanical work.
+
+A far better phrase to express this equivalence of force has been
+suggested and used by several writers in what is called the "Transmutation
+of Force." For there is no correlation, or reciprocal relation, between
+heat as originally produced by the consumption of fuel and the force as
+engendered in steam before it is transmuted into work. Nor is there any
+real equivalence as between the two forces after its transmutation. A very
+large per centage of heat is lost in its transmutation from a latent form
+in fuel to an active or available form in steam, and a still greater loss
+in its transmission into work by machinery. Theoretically, there may be
+such an equivalence as that named, but practically it is impossible to
+realize it. And a theory that is impossible of realization is of no
+practical utility in itself, and of little value as the basis of further
+theory. If, then, the theory of force equivalence is a failure in
+practical application, it furnishes a very poor basis on which to
+predicate force-correlation, or the doctrine of reciprocal forces. It is
+estimated, for instance, that a pound weight falling seven hundred and
+seventy-two feet, will, in striking the earth, impart to it a degree of
+heat equivalent to raising one pound of water 1° F. But the heat thus
+imparted can never be so utilized as to raise a pound weight seven hundred
+and seventy-two feet into the air.
+
+This shows that there is no actual reciprocity of relationship between the
+force as originally engendered and finally expended in work. Nor can it be
+shown that the original force is transmuted or changed into another and
+different kind of force by the operation. The force generated and the
+force expended are essentially one and the same, as much so as that
+transmitted from the power to the weight by means of a rope and pulley.
+And the quality of the force is not changed, whether the weight be lifted
+by machinery or the human hand. Force, in its mechanical sense, is that
+power which produces motion, or an alteration in the direction of motion,
+and is incapable of being specialized, except in a highly figurative
+sense, into a thousand and one correlates of motion. But these
+miscellaneous and figurative forces are not what we are considering. The
+doctrine of force-correlation takes no such wide and comprehensive sweep.
+It embraces neither the force of wit, nor the force of folly; but
+mechanical force and its equivalents. The force exercised by the human
+hand in lifting a weight either with or without rope and pulley is, in
+every definitional sense of the word, mechanical force. For the arm and
+hand are only the implements, or mechanical contrivances of nature, by
+which the will-power transmutes itself into work, or, more properly
+speaking, transmits itself from the point of force-generation to that of
+force-expenditure. And this is precisely the office performed by all
+mechanical contrivances for the transmission--not transmutation--of force.
+And the most perfect machine is that which transmits the engendered force,
+with the least possible waste or abandonment, to its point of ultimate
+expenditure in work.
+
+All these hypothetical correlates of force, therefore, predicated upon the
+doctrine of force-transmutation, have no foundation in fact, since the
+force transmitted from the point of generation to the point of expenditure
+undergoes no change but that of direction, in its passage along rope,
+wire, belt, pulley, shafting, etc. A man whose limbs have been paralyzed,
+may still will to remove mountains. The will-power is the same, but the
+mechanical contrivances for its transmission are wanting. Of the actual
+point or centre of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power,
+we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards
+the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and
+tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or
+pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a
+rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular
+changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely
+related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through the contracted
+tissues, electrifies the crowbar, or flashes into work from the point of a
+pickaxe. Whatever produces, or tends to produce, motion, or an alteration
+in its direction, is mechanical force, no matter from what force-centre it
+may start. When we can definitely determine the centre of vital force, as
+exercised in building up vital structure, _not in wielding pickaxes_, it
+is to be hoped we shall be able to distinguish, by the proper correlates,
+vital force from that which is mechanical. But the task is manifestly a
+hopeless one with the materialists.
+
+Professor Beale positively denies that there are any such physical
+force-relations as those claimed by the materialists, and asserts that
+vital force bears no relation, or correlation, to either chemical or
+physical force; that the one is a distinct and separate factor from the
+other, and cannot be interpreted in the same force-formulæ. He says: "The
+idea of motion, or heat, or light, or electricity _forming_ or _building_
+up, or _constructing_ any texture capable of fulfilling a definite
+purpose, seems absurd, and opposed to all that is known, and yet is the
+notion continually forced upon us, that vitality, which does construct, is
+but a correlate of ordinary energy or motion."
+
+But after devoting so much time to "force-correlation," and
+"force-differentiation," the advocates of "molecular-machinery" may feel
+themselves neglected if we dismiss their favorite hobby without further
+notice. The precise parentage of this term is disputed, but it has any
+number of _putative_ fathers. We have spoken of the size of the molecules
+themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled together on the
+point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now consider the size
+of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own machine, and is
+provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact, it is a very
+nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the molecules,
+instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules run the
+machines. Unfortunately, the question is one that can never be determined.
+The requisite scientific data will forever be wanting.
+
+But Professor James C. Maxwell, now, or quite recently, filling the chair
+of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, England, has
+furnished us with _approximate_ calculations. On the strength of his
+approximations we will proceed to consider the dimensions of these
+wonderful little machines. And first, it may be axiomatically laid down
+that these molecular machines, which either run the molecules or are run
+by them, can never exceed the size of their respective molecules.
+Conceding, then, that each one of these machines exactly fits into its own
+molecule, so as to present identically the same dimensions--as well as
+their largest possible dimensions--it would require two millions of them,
+placed in a row, to make one millimetre, or the one three hundred and
+ninety-four thousandths of an inch in length, or seven hundred and
+eighty-eight billions of them to make one inch! Who will ever be staggered
+at _Sirius_-distances, after this? And who will deny that an infinite
+world lies below the point of our microscopic vision, if not an Infinite
+kingdom and throne beyond our telescopic glance?
+
+But, following the same high authority in experimental physics, let us
+consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not
+marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions
+of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply
+give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system.
+Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing
+in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet
+kicking of the beam, just a fraction between four and five grammes, or--to
+differentiate the weights--a small fraction over one-tenth of an ounce!
+
+But why not get down to the atoms, of which the molecules are only the
+theoretical congeries, and marshal the "atomic forces" into line? These
+embryonic atoms are much the braver warriors, and, when summoned to do
+battle, spring, lithe and light-armed, against the elemental foe. They are
+no cowardly molecules, these atoms, but make war against Titans, as well
+as Titanic thrones and powers. The elements recognize them as their body
+guardsmen, their corps of invincible lancers, their bravest and best
+soldiers in fight. And they are wholly indifferent as to the legions of
+molecules arrayed against them, and would as soon hurl a mountain of them
+into the sea as to sport with a zephyr or caper with the east wind. Why
+not summon these countless myriads of bright and invincible spearmen, to
+batter down the walls of this Cretan labyrinth of Life? An army of these
+would be worth all the molecules that Professor Maxwell could array in
+line, in a thousand years. No life-problem need remain unsolved with their
+bright spears to drive the tenebrious mists before them. Even Professor
+Tyndall's "fog-banks of primordial haze" would be ignominiously scattered
+in flight before these atomic legions. Let our materialistic friends
+summon them, then, to their aid. The field of controversy will never be
+won by their molecular "Hessians." The ineffably bright lancers that stand
+guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout
+the vitalistic enemy. Advance them then to the front, and, beneath the
+shadowy wing of pestilence or some other appalling ensign of destruction,
+the abashed vital squadrons will flee in dismay.
+
+But let us pass from scientific speculations to alleged scientific facts.
+In a paper read by Dr. Hughes Bennett before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1861, its author says: "The first step, in the process of
+organic formation, is the production of an organic fluid; the second, the
+precipitation of organic molecules, from which, according to the molecular
+law of growth, all other textures are derived either directly or
+indirectly." Here again the molecules, and not the elementary atoms, are
+advanced to the front, and not a little anxiety is shown, in a
+definitional way, to identify vital processes of growth with crystalline
+processes of formation. But Dr. Bennett entirely mistakes, as well as
+misstates, the process of vital development, if he does not overlook the
+law governing the formation of crystals. There can be no symmetrically
+arranged solids in an inorganic fluid without the presence of some law, or
+principle, definitely determining, not the "precipitation," but the
+"formation," of crystals. The inorganic particles are not precipitated or
+thrown downward, any more than they are sublevated or thrown upward. The
+process is one of formation, not precipitation. Every crystallographer,
+not hampered by materialistic views and anti-vital theories, admits the
+presence of a fixed and determinate law governing each crystalline system,
+whatever may be the homologous parts or the unequal axes it represents.
+
+And so of the equally undeviating law of vital growth. Life comes from no
+mere "precipitation of organic molecules," as Dr. Bennett would have us
+believe. If so, what is it that precipitates the molecules? They can
+hardly be said to precipitate themselves. To precipitate, in a chemical
+sense, is to be thrown down, or caused to be thrown down, as a substance
+from its solution. What, then, causes the molecules to be thus
+precipitously thrown down from a fluid to a solid, or a semi-solid, state?
+It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the
+molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of
+nature--one presupposing an intelligent law-giver--to effect the
+"precipitating process," if any such really exists.
+
+But it does not exist. The first step is one of development and
+growth--the manifestation of functional activity--the building up of
+organic or cellular tissue. The exact process, in the case of seed-bearing
+plants and trees, is well known. All those familiar with the
+characteristic differences of seeds, their chemical constituents, their
+tegumentary coverings, rudimentary parts, etc., thoroughly understand the
+process in its outward manifestation. There is no precipitation of
+molecules as in an organic fluid, unless the albumen lying between the
+embryo and testa of the seeds, and constituting the nutriment on which the
+plant feeds during its primary stages of growth, can be called a fluid. It
+throws none of its characteristic ingredients downward any more than
+upward. Indeed the greater tendency of its molecules is upward rather than
+downward, in the "molecular processes" (vital ones) by which the embryonic
+cell is started upon its career of plant-life. The celebrated Dr. Liebig
+says of this albuminous environment: "It is the foundation, the
+starting-point, of the whole series of peculiar tissues which constitute
+those organs which are the seat of all vital actions." In the case of
+animal life, this albumen abounds in the serum of the blood, enters
+largely into the chyle and lymph, goes to build up the tissues and
+muscles, and is the chief ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the
+brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to
+coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries
+to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less
+insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140° to 160° F.
+
+When the seed is planted or placed in water, it first commences to swell
+from the absorption of the water or moisture of the ground by the pores of
+its external covering, the favorable temperature being from 60° to 80° F.
+It gradually expands until its outer membranes burst, and its initial
+rootlets clasp their hold upon the earth. From this point its several
+stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the
+first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a
+change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it
+would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in
+decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the
+grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the
+Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the
+decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened
+into life--ascends into the bright light, the warm sunshine, the
+refreshing presence of showers and dews. In this way it fulfils its
+providential purpose of yielding to the sower the more munificent life
+which he is forever seeking to attain.
+
+Its germination is the springing up of the inner living principle of the
+grain, not its outer envelope or dead husk. This disappears in decay,
+except the small nutrient portion within which the germinal principle of
+life would seem to reside, and which undergoes a thorough chemical change
+in the process of passing from death unto life, or being assimilated and
+taken up into the new living structure. The Apostle's comparison
+distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from
+death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still
+more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the
+dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher
+and more perfect life--the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in
+the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and
+co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally
+constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing
+agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the
+present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and
+decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most
+beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death,
+and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of
+life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-Point.
+
+
+
+Granting that the assumption of Darwinism rests, as claimed, on the fixed
+and inflexible adaptation of means to ends, in the diversified yet
+measurably specialized processes of nature, there is no logical deduction
+to be drawn therefrom but that which traces the representatives of all the
+great types of the animal kingdom to one single source, and that not the
+Sovereign Intelligence of the Universe, but a mere "ovule in protoplasm,"
+or what may be defined, in its unaggregated form, as an inconceivably
+small whirligig, having motion on a central axis, but whether an
+independent motion of its own, or one derived from an Infinite
+Intelligence, the Darwinian systematizers are not bold enough to aver.
+They have too many _a priori_ scruples either to assert the one
+proposition or to deny the other. What set this little whirligig in motion
+is a mystery that lies beyond the purview of science, so called, and into
+the depths of this infinitessimal and most mysterious little chamber they
+refuse to go.
+
+They search not for the evidence of an Infinite Intelligence in the
+outermost circle of the heavens where the highest is to be found, and
+where a bound is set that we may not pass, but shutting their eyes to all
+the grander evidences of such an Intelligence, they dive down into the
+infinitessimal realm of nature and assume to dig out the sublimer secrets
+of the universe there. And this is their grand discovery: That this
+infinitessimal whirligig of theirs has not only whirled man into
+existence, but the entire circle of the heavens, with the innumerable host
+of stars that march therein, and all the boundless systems of worlds that
+roll in space. With this subordination of the Infinite to the
+infinitessimal, of intelligence to insensate matter, of divine energy, so
+to speak, to blind molecular force, they are satisfied; and, like the mole
+in the fable, conceive their little molecule to be the only possible
+creator of a stupendous universe.
+
+Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating
+theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or
+the old adage, _omne vivum ex ovo_--all life is from an egg. For they
+assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in
+protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being
+this little _ovum_ or cellule, from which have issued all possible
+organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory
+essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific coördination of its
+several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of this
+infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state of all
+matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of past time,
+not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so
+stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the
+first conception of it.
+
+Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of
+development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the
+reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the
+incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the
+"selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a
+beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things
+right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development
+begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he
+admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato,
+Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of
+legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."
+
+Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long
+one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined
+empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the
+universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive
+sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity
+for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena,
+in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away
+the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new
+varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in
+obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."
+
+In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be
+called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that,
+however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of
+uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not
+only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical
+deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of
+uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or
+approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in
+the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link
+connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest
+known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher
+congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no
+saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The
+heights of science are not to be scaled _per saltum_, except as degrees
+may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[35]
+
+There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like
+the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of
+amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and
+improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what
+page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back,
+has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the
+relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of
+the _Infusoria_ possess the same or similar characteristics, and predicate
+relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants sometimes spring
+from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our diagnoses must be
+freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the chain of
+continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the imaginary
+foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most
+enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid
+partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been
+pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future
+discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science,
+inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no
+assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we
+constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of
+imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars
+into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of
+creation after truth.
+
+But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he
+meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the
+first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is
+from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate
+to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges
+it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his _primum
+mobile_--or on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the
+eye of imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not
+matter itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary
+constituent of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its
+unaggregated form, admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of
+comprehension; but rests entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here
+add that a system which begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in
+them--as that of bridging the chasmal difference between a gorilla and a
+Plato--can be dignified into a science only by a still greater stretch of
+the imagination--that of bridging the difference between the Darwinian
+zero and his ninety degrees of development in a Darwin himself!
+
+Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in
+philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists
+between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not
+self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic
+life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation
+existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of
+matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and
+there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as
+extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts
+are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction
+exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in
+our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where
+reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.
+
+And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once
+aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of
+these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have
+before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we
+follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the
+blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these
+intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found
+anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied
+upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as
+unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two
+ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No
+processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the
+elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual
+judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the
+world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to
+"Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.
+
+But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary _datum_ of
+consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on
+something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since
+science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged,
+furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of
+inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived,
+necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to
+the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its
+inseparable companion and guest.
+
+Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in
+the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, _was_ God,--or on Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and
+has only to go on _ad infinitum_ to whirl us out a God, as it has already
+whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this ovulistic
+whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm and man,
+since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the process
+has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between man and
+Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us nature
+evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a God
+presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations of
+the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."
+
+These evolutionists manifestly get the cart before the horse in their
+category of cosmological events. It is not inert matter organizing itself
+into life, nor any mode of physical or chemical action, nor any mere
+manifestation of motion or of heat, nor any other conceivable correlation
+of natural forces. None of these has enabled us to penetrate the
+mysterious _inner-chamber_ of life itself. For reasons obviously connected
+with our own welfare, He, from whom alone are "the issues of life," seems
+to have ordained that we should fathom the depths of both physical and
+chemical force, and beneficently wield and direct them to our own uses.
+But this vital force; this something that stands apart from and is
+essentially different from all other kinds of force, is of a nature that
+baffles all our efforts to approach. The power to grasp it, or even to
+penetrate in the slightest degree its mysteries, is delegated to none. All
+attempts to lay bare this principle of vitality, or level the barriers
+that separate it from physical or chemical action, have utterly failed. We
+know no more of its essence now than was known a thousand years ago, and
+know no less than will be known a thousand years hence. To become masters
+of the mystery, we must enter the impenetrable veil within which the
+Infinite Intelligence of the universe presides,--who, we are told,
+"sendeth forth his spirit, and we are created, who taketh away our breath,
+we die and return to our dust." [36]
+
+We are just as much bewildered in respect to this vital principle in our
+classifications of the myriads of little creatures careering over the
+field of the microscope, as when we turn to the most marked formations of
+genera and species in geological distribution. The great trouble with Mr.
+Darwin's _vinculum_ is, that its weakest links are precisely where the
+strongest should be found, and _vice versa_. With a candor rarely
+displayed by a writer who is spinning a theory, he admits this. The
+geological record is not what he would have it to be. Whole chapters are
+gone where they are most needed, and nature's lithography seems constantly
+at fault. Independent species are now and then springing up where
+derivatives should be looked for, while derivatives are everywhere
+disappearing in non-derivatives. Many of the middle Tertiary _molusca_,
+and a large proportion of the later Tertiary period, are specifically
+identical with the living species, of to-day. What has "natural selection"
+been doing for this family in the last million years or more? Manifestly
+nothing, and less than nothing, for some of the species have dropped out
+altogether.
+
+These facts, and hundreds of others like them, are constantly obtruding
+themselves upon our attention to show, in harmony with the Bible Genesis,
+the immutability of species--the absolute fixity of types--rather than
+their variability, as claimed. If nature abhors anything more than a
+_vacuum_, it is manifestly any marked transition from fixed types, and she
+thunders her edicts against it in the non-fertility of all hybrids. The
+doctrine of variation lacks the all-essential element of continuity, and
+is oftener at war with the theory of the "selection of the fittest," than
+it is with the selection of the "unfit." The leap from Lepidosirens to
+Amphibians is no greater than the interval between any two species of
+animals or plants yet discovered, either fossil or living. The intervals
+are as numerous as the species themselves, and everywhere constitute great
+and sudden leaps, or such transitional changes as "natural selection"
+could not have effected independently of intervening forms--those that
+nowhere exist in nature, and never have existed, if we are to credit
+geologic and paleontologic records. There is everywhere similarity of
+structure, but not identity; and the nearer we approach to identity of
+structure the wider the divergence in similarity of characteristics. A
+bird may be taught to talk and sing snatches of music. But no monkey has
+ever been able to articulate human sounds, much less give them rhythmical
+utterance.
+
+Take the case of the wild pigeon, a subject that especially delights Mr.
+Darwin. Most of the deviations are confined to the domesticated breeds,
+and none of these rank in strength, hardiness, capability of flight, or
+symmetry of structure, with the wild or typical bird. There are
+well-defined deviations, but no sensible improvements, except to the eye
+of the bird-fancier. The deviations are simply entailed weaknesses, or the
+very reverse of what should appear from the "selection of the fittest."
+The fact undeniably is, that these variations are almost wholly
+abnormal--mere exaggerated characteristics, induced in the first instance,
+perhaps, by high cultivation and close in-and-in breeding.
+
+Turn these abnormal varieties loose, let them go back to the aboriginal
+stock, and these characteristics will rapidly disappear; that is, they
+will ultimately lose themselves or melt away in the original type. Mr.
+Darwin admits that the tendency will be to reversion, but he insists,
+manifestly without any positive proof therefor, that the greater tendency
+is to new centres of attraction, and not necessarily the primitive one.
+But this is mere assumption--sheer begging the question on his
+part,--since all the oscillations are incontestibly about the original or
+type centre.
+
+The same may be said of the typical races of men, like the negro and wild
+Indian of our prairies. You may lift them out of their primitive
+condition--temporarily suspend, if you please so to put it, their
+primordial attraction,--but, left again to themselves, they will go back
+to the original type; that is, their offspring will again infest the
+jungles and roam their native hunting-grounds. The process here is the
+very reverse of the Darwinian theory. Reversion, as a rule, follows the
+degeneracy of types, instead of there being any favorable homogeneous
+result, springing from a new centre of attraction. The Indian makes a
+splendid savage, but a very poor white man. Think of Red Jacket taking the
+part of Mercutio in the play or enacting the more valiant _role_ of
+Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth. An infusion of white blood does not
+help the matter, but rather makes it worse. Generally, the meanest Indian
+on the continent is your half-breed, and among the negroes there is no
+term so expressive of the contempt of that race, as that applied by them
+to a mulatto. The present condition of Mexico affords a striking
+exemplification of this law of reversion. The inheritable characteristics
+or variations, produced from an infusion of Spanish blood, are rapidly
+disappearing--the native blood whipping out the European. The potency is
+in the inferior blood, simply because it is the predominating one. The
+result has been no homogeneous new race, but a reversion, now manifestly
+in progress, to the type centre or aboriginal stock. And the curse
+pronounced by Ezekiel upon mongrel tribes--"woe unto the mingled peoples"
+may have a significance in this connection worth considering; but it
+manifestly falls outside the scope of our present inquiry.
+
+In considering the embryological structure of man, and the homologies he
+therein presents to the lower animals, Mr. Darwin thus conclusively (in
+his judgment) remarks: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
+quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in
+his habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."
+
+But Mr. Darwin's pronominal "we," in this connection, admits of
+qualification. He can hardly speak for all the scientific world at once.
+The philosophical maxim of Sir Isaac Newton--_hypotheses non fingo_--I
+build no hypotheses, make no suppositions, but adhere to facts--has a few
+followers still left. But what are Mr. Darwin's facts? Has he yet
+discovered the caudal man, except as the ever-fertile Mr. Stanley heard of
+one in Africa? And where is his monkey that first lost the prehensile
+power to climb trees? For bear in mind that it was the loss of this
+prehensile power that resulted in the caudal atrophy of our monkey
+progenitors, _who became men simply because they were tailless monkeys!_
+They had lost their power to climb trees, and accordingly had no longer
+any use for tails to let themselves down from the limbs. A "beneficent
+necessity" therefore, according to Mr. Emerson, dropped the tail as
+something decidedly "unfit." For the simplest tyro in Darwinian philosophy
+will see that the loss of the Catarrhine monkey's tail, if it ever
+occurred, could not have resulted from the "selection of the fittest." The
+deeper Emersonian philosophy of the "rejection of the unfit," affords the
+only solution of the difficulty, and then only on the assumption that the
+tail is an unfit appendage for the monkey.
+
+With the loss of his tail, in the light of this new genesis, the monkey
+necessarily ceased to be arboreal in his habits. He could no longer
+subsist on the fruits and nuts of trees, or take refuge therein from his
+enemies. He had to go to work and make weapons to defend himself--to
+construct tools--make and set traps, live on his wits, and not on his
+prehensile power to climb trees. He soon discovered, of course, that the
+longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride
+towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic
+philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this
+was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more
+masterly feats of agility than ever,--those dependent, not on muscular
+function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow.
+Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he
+improved under this maternal instructor we are left to infer from the
+paramount conclusion of Mr. Darwin, _that the demoralized monkey became
+the incipient man_!
+
+But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
+differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the
+loss of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's
+brain? or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
+differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous
+and demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every
+bone, muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the
+same. The chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are
+differently bundled and differently strung. In intonations of
+voice--symmetry of arms, legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic
+and land habits, the frog is a much nearer approach to man than the
+monkey, as all caricaturists, delineating aldermanic proportions, will
+agree. And Mr. Darwin might have immortalized himself by deriving the
+builders of the ancient pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats
+and croakers of the Swiss lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For
+everybody knows, or thinks he knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he
+didn't wag it off, he certainly absorbed its waggishness as a
+distinguishing characteristic of the "coming man"--the future Artemas
+Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral origin will also
+account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all human
+juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
+relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
+encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
+on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
+agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
+loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor
+does he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated
+development." He is more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than
+any other, and finds the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That
+is, he assumes that among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the
+Tertiary or some other period, some female monkeys were less hirsute
+than others, and that they naturally preferred males possessing similar
+characteristics. These divergencies were thus commenced, and, by
+continuous "sexual selection," the infirmity (for such he regards the
+loss of hair) was propagated until the race was almost entirely denuded
+or bereft of this covering. In the same way he accounts for nearly all
+the differentiations of the race, among the various tribes now or
+formerly inhabiting the earth. All have sprung from the same semi-human
+progenitors--_apes that lost their capacity to subsist as apes, and
+hence found it necessary to subsist as men_!
+
+The law of degeneracy has, therefore, had quite as much to do with human
+origins as that of progressive development. In fact, it is the paramount
+law from a Darwinian stand-point. For the loss of hair and of the
+prehensile power to climb trees are both conceded by Mr. Darwin to be
+serious defects and drawbacks in the ape family.
+
+But the law of sexual selection, as treated by the evolutionists, is not
+scientifically accurate, nor is it true in fact. The loving tendency of
+nature is to opposites, not likes. The positive and negative poles are
+those that play into each other with most marvellous effect. Each repels
+its like and rushes to the embrace of its opposite. Extremes lovingly meet
+everywhere. A brunette selects a blonde and a blonde a brunette, as a
+general rule in matrimony. A tall man or woman, with rare exceptions,
+chooses a short companion for life. Dark eyes delight in those that are
+light, and _vice-versa_. Everywhere nature seeks diversity, not
+similitude. The gayest and brightest feathered songster craves
+companionship in modest and unobtrusive colors. Diversity is the law of
+life, as equality, or versimilitude, is that of death. Neither natural
+selection, nor sexual selection, runs counter to this law. If Mr. Darwin's
+theory were true, that likes selected likes, then the two marked extremes
+which should have characterized the race, soon after its emergence from
+the semi-human state, should have been giants and pigmies, Gargantuas and
+Lilliputs. Otherwise "sexual selection," as treated by its author, plays
+no intelligible part in the economy of nature, except to counterbalance
+variability, not to propagate it.
+
+But the Darwinian assumption that the primeval man, or his immediate
+ape-like progenitor, came through "natural selection," that is, through
+the "survival of the fittest," is subject to one or two other objections
+which we shall briefly notice. And the first objection is not altogether
+a technical one. The term "fittest," as applied to a monkey, has at once
+a definite and comprehensive significance to us. It implies the presence
+of whatever is most perfect of its kind in the monkey _as_ a monkey, and
+not in the monkey _as_ something else than a monkey. They are all
+admirably adapted for climbing trees; and it is this adaptation that
+secures them safety, or complete immunity, in shelter from their
+enemies. To say that nature selects the fittest for them--for any
+species of monkey--by converting their forefeet into rudimentary hands,
+with a loss of prehension and no corresponding advantages in locomotion,
+is to use language without any appreciable significance to us. We can
+only say that what is fittest for the monkey is ill-fitted for man, and
+the reverse. This is all we can definitely predicate of them, from what
+we know of their anatomical structure, and the diversified uses to which
+it may be put.
+
+The fact is, as the Bible genesis shows, that every living thing is
+perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian
+variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of
+this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of
+Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth
+abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so,
+and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind,
+and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake is
+no less perfect than a Plato or a John Howard.
+
+When we consider man's upright position; the firmness and steadiness with
+which he plants his foot upon the earth; when we examine the mechanism of
+his hand, and the wonderful and almost unlimited range it possesses for
+diversified use; when we see how ill-fitted he is for climbing trees, yet
+how express and admirable for climbing among the stars, even to the
+outermost milky-way, the idea that what is fittest for him is fit for the
+chattering monkey, is too absurd to give us pause. And yet how does Mr.
+Darwin know that the monkey has been climbing up, all these hundred
+thousand or million years, into man, as one of the congenital freaks of
+nature, and not man shambling down into the monkey as a reverse
+congenital freak. Children have sometimes been born with a singular
+resemblance to the ape family, but no ape has ever, to Mr. Darwin's
+knowledge, produced issue more manlike than itself. The divergencies run
+the wrong way to meet the conditions of the development theory. We have
+had nearly five thousand years in which to mark these transitional
+changes, and yet the monkey of to-day is identical with that painted on
+the walls of ancient Meroe. In all this time he has made no advance in
+the genetic relation; and if we turn back the lithographic pages of
+nature for a hundred times five thousand years, we shall find no
+essential departure from aboriginal types.
+
+But the Darwinian hypothesis admits of a more conclusive answer than we
+have yet given. Past time, it will be conceded, is theoretically if not
+actually infinite; and in all past time, nature has been tugging away at
+Mr. Darwin's problem of the "survival of the fittest." It is no two
+hundred and fifty thousand years, nor two hundred and fifty millions, but
+an infinite duration of past time that covers the period in which she has
+been wrestling with this problem. How successfully has she solved it? In
+the Darwinian sense of the term "fittest," she has not so much as stated
+her first equation or extracted the root of her first power. She is
+manifestly as much puzzled over the problem as Mr. Darwin himself. He
+fails to see that the "survival of the fittest," necessarily implies, or
+carries with it, the correlative proposition,--the "non-survival of the
+unfit." And when such a law has been operative for an infinite duration of
+past time, the "unfit," however infinitely distributed at first, should
+have disappeared altogether, many thousands, if not millions, of years
+ago. If the evolutionists are dealing with vast problems, and assigning to
+nature, unlimited factors to express the totality of her unerring
+operations, they must be careful to limit the time in which any one of her
+given labors is to be accomplished. If she makes any progress at all, an
+infinite duration of past time should enable her to complete her work just
+as effectually as an infinite duration of time to come.
+
+But by what law of "natural selection," appertaining to a single pair of
+old world monkeys, have their offspring advanced to this regal state of
+manhood, while all other pairs have remained stationary, or precisely
+where they were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago or more? Why
+this exceptional divergence in the case of a single pair of monkeys? Why
+this anomalous, aberrant, and thoroughly eccentric movement on the part
+of nature? We had supposed that her operations were uniform--conformable
+to fixed laws of movement. The doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"
+implies this. Why then, should nature, in her unerring operations, have
+selected the fittest in respect to a single pair of Catarrhine monkeys,
+and at the same time rejected the fittest in the case of a million other
+pairs? If she had selected only the fittest in respect to this old world
+stock of monkeys, the entire Catarrhine family should have disappeared
+in the next higher or fitter group--a group nowhere to be found in
+geological distribution. The break between man and this Catarrhine
+monkey covers quite a series of links in the genetic vinculum;[37] and
+yet between the two we find no high form of a low type fitting into a
+low form of a high type, as we manifestly should, to account for all the
+diversified changes that must have taken place in the interim. And what
+is true of the types is measurably true of the classes within the types,
+as well as of the orders within the classes. Wide deviations in forms,
+as in characteristics, would seem to be the invariable rule; the
+blending of type into type, except perhaps in remote relationships, is
+nowhere visible.
+
+But if "variation" and "natural selection" have played important parts in
+the economy of nature, why may not "specific creation" have played _its_
+part also? Positive science can hardly flatter itself with the belief that
+it is rolling back the mystery of the universe to a point beyond which
+"specific creation" might not have commenced, or the divine fiat been put
+forth. To believe in the possibility of a rational synthesis, limited to
+sensible experience, or phenomenal facts within our reach, that shall
+climb from law to law, or from concrete fact to abstract conception, until
+it shall reach the _Ultima Thule_ of all law, is to carry the faith of the
+scientist beyond the most transcendental belief of the theologian, and
+make him a greater dupe to his illusions than was ever cloistered in a
+monastery or affected austerity therein as a balm to the flesh. We may
+substitute new dogmatisms for old ones, but we can never postulate a
+principle that shall make the general laws of nature any less mysterious
+than the partial or exceptional, or that shall in the long run, render
+"natural selection" any more comprehensible, or acceptable to the rational
+intuition, than "specific creation." For while one class of scientists is
+climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law
+that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more
+analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by
+divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief
+of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage
+of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the
+human mind is ever towards this abstract conception--this one
+all-encompassing law of the universe. It steadily speculates in this
+direction, and some of the highest triumphs of our age, in physical as
+well as metaphysical science, are measurably due to this tendency. The
+scientific mind is not confined wholly to experimental research. It is
+stimulated to higher contemplations, and is constantly disposed to make
+larger and more comprehensive groupings of analogous facts. It is fast
+coming to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,
+chemical affinity, molecular force, and even Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig, as only so many manifestations or expressions of one and the
+same force in the universe--that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force
+(not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens,
+"binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his
+season, and guides Arcturus with his suns."
+
+It is the boast of the Darwinian systematizers that their development
+theory not only harmonizes with, but admirably supplements and out-rounds
+the grander speculation of Laplace, termed the "Nebular Hypothesis," which
+regards the universe as having originally consisted of uniformly diffused
+matter, filling all space, which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation, much after the manner of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig, into
+an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+space. Of the correctness of this hypothesis it is unnecessary to speak.
+It is to the Darwinian speculation what the infinite is to the
+infinitessimal, and we only refer to it to bring out the vastness of the
+conception as compared to the latter theory, and to predicate thereon the
+more conclusive induction that an Infinite Intelligence directs and
+superintends all.
+
+In an area in the Milky-way not exceeding one-tenth of the moon's disc,
+Mr. Herschel computes the number of stars at not less than twenty
+thousand, with clusters of nebulae lying still beyond. As we know that no
+bodies shining by reflected light could be visible at such enormous
+distances, we are left to conclude that each of these twinkling points is
+a sun, dispensing light and heat to probably as many planets as hold their
+courses about the central orb in our own system. From the superior
+magnitude of many of the stars, as compared with the sun, we may
+reasonably infer that many of these vast sun-systems occupy a much larger
+field in space than our own. This would give an area in space of not less
+than six thousand millions of miles as the field occupied by each of these
+sun-systems. And as the distance between each of these systems and its
+nearest neighbor is probably not less than that of our sun from the
+nearest star, we have the enormous and inconceivable distance of not less
+than nineteen billions of miles separating each one of these twenty
+thousand stars or sun-systems, occupying a space in the heavens apparently
+no bigger than a man's hand. And yet Infinity, as we apprehend the term,
+lies beyond this vast cluster of constellated worlds! Where is Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig in the comparison, or Mr. Emerson's vegetal
+stomach, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's "potential factors," to express the
+sum-total of all this totality,--this gigantic assemblage of stars
+clustered about a single point in the Milky-way? The human mind absolutely
+reels--staggers bewildered and amazed--under the load of conceptions
+imposed by these few twinkling stars, and is ready to exclaim,--
+
+  "Oh, star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
+  To waft us back a message of despair?"
+
+But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible
+in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with
+inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of
+the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how
+unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of _Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig as the author of it all!_ No wonder the inspired Psalmist
+exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
+his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens
+declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the
+immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration
+lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem,
+while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing
+beneath the glebe!
+
+And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre
+of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of
+sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the
+Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding
+all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central
+point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with
+nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must
+be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe,
+to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical
+induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their
+orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why
+not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and
+utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It
+can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it
+has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our
+post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that
+science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not
+Infinite Intelligence accomplish?
+
+But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a
+coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal
+only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize
+quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the
+theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to
+a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in
+climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when
+concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the
+ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G.
+Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also
+insists that when _a priori_ speculation is lost in abstract conceptions,
+the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions of
+consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is
+undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we
+stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if
+in the august presence of Deity itself.
+
+But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of
+consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the
+universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In
+supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of
+Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of
+aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still
+going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or
+energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself
+in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the
+universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential
+energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already
+resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other
+heavenly bodies.[38] All the exterior planets, or a majority of them at
+least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled worlds, or those in
+which all life has hopelessly ceased and become extinct. All has utterly
+disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's couplets,
+
+  "Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,
+  Nor glass can reach--from zoophyte to man."
+
+All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many
+immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science,
+except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe,
+resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent
+clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian
+whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream,
+which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun
+extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless,
+and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+
+Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it!
+Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers,
+and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a
+_credo_ only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable
+the simple faith of the star-led Magi, who
+
+  "Deeming the light that in the east was seen
+       An earnest and a prophecy of rest
+     To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"
+
+came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to
+the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+
+[1]: It may be proper, however, to state that the tenth and concluding
+     chapter was originally written as a lecture, and delivered about a
+     year ago in New Haven, Boston, and at other points. A request for its
+     publication has induced the author to place it in this volume, with
+     the portion referring to the Bible genesis omitted. It will be found
+     germane to the general subject.
+
+[2]: "Without this latent presence of the 'I am,' all modes of existence
+     in the external world flit before us as colored shadows, with no
+     greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of a rock hath in the
+     gliding stream, or the rainbow on the fast-sailing rain
+     storm."--_Coleridge's_ "_Comments on Essays_."
+
+[3]: And science that is not purely inductive--i.e. primarily based on
+     the inviolability of our intuitions--is no science at all, but the
+     sheerest possible speculation.
+
+[4]: This presence of an active living principle in nature, one originally
+     assigned as the "_divina particula auræ_" of every living thing, is
+     frequently referred to in the higher inspirational moods of our
+     poets. Wordsworth exquisitely refers to it in the following lines of
+     his "Excursion:"--
+
+       "To every form of being is assigned
+       An _active_ principle: howe'er removed
+       From sense and observation, it subsists
+       In all things, in all nature, in the stars
+       Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds;
+       In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
+       That paves the brooks."
+
+[5]: The existence of vital units is conceded by some of the staunchest
+     materialists, such as Herbert Spencer, Professor Bastian and others.
+     Professor Bastian says: "The countless myriads of living units which
+     have been evolved in different ages of the world's history, must, in
+     each period, have given rise to innumerable multitudes of what have
+     been called 'trees of life.'" He insists, however, that they have
+     been "evolved" from something, or by some unknown process. But we
+     shall show further on that a "unit" can neither be _evolved_ nor
+     _involved_, and that this is as true of vital units as of the
+     mathematical or chemical unit. Neither evolution nor involution will
+     ever effect the value of a unit.
+
+[6]: According to Aristotle, the great world-_ordainer_ is the constant
+     world-_sustainer_.
+
+[7]: The definition which Professor Robinson, in his Lexicon of the New
+     Testament, gives of the word σπέρμα, as connected with the "divine
+     life," entirely harmonizes with this view of the subject. He says: Trop.
+     I John 3, 9, πἃς ό γεγενημένος ἐκ του ϑεου σπέρμα ἀυτον (ϑεὄν) εν ᾶντῶ
+     πενεὶ _i.e._ the germ or principle of divine life through which he
+     is begotten of god, το πνεὒμα.
+
+[8]: Professor Schmidt, of the University of Strasburg, who insists that
+     species are only relatively stable, admits that they remain
+     persistent as long as they exist under the same external conditions.
+     Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species. Nor are
+     environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions
+     results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of
+     conditions results in their appearance.
+
+[9]: Says M. Ch. Bonnet, in his "La Palingéuésie Philosophique;" "Il est
+     de la plus parfaite évidence que la matiere est susceptible d'une
+     infinité de mouvemens divers, et de modifications diverses," and this
+     is the universal claim of the materialists.
+
+[10]: Professor Burdach (as trad, par Jourdan), in speaking of the
+      productive power of nature, says, "Limitée quant á l' étendue de ses
+      manifestations, elle continue toujottrs d' agir pour la conservation
+      de ce qui a été créé, et, quoiqu' elle ne maintenue les formes
+      organiques supérieures que par la seule propagation, il ne répugne
+      point au bon sens de penser qu' aujourd' hui encore elle a la
+      puissance de produire les formes inférieures avec des eléments
+      hétérogénes, comme elle a créé originairement tout ce qui posséde l'
+      organisation." This shows that its author believed in the
+      possibility of the "superior organic forms," like the mastodon,
+      megatherium, etc. from the "heterogenetic elements"--those
+      undergoing every conceivable change--as well as the "inferior
+      forms." At all events, it is a legitimate induction from
+      materialistic premises.
+
+[11]: This point is conclusively made by Professor Burdach, who says (we
+      quote from Jourdan); "La tendance interieure á la configuration
+      existe avant sa manifestation." And by his _tendance interieure_ he
+      must mean some vital or other law, equivalent to an _entia_ in
+      matter, which results _in_, not _from_ manifestation.
+
+[12]: Goethe borrowed his idea of an archetypal world from Plato and the
+      Eleatic school. They held that the world was originated, and not
+      eternal; that it was framed by the Creator after a perfect
+      archetype, one eternally existing in the divine mind, if not an
+      actual soul-world of which our own is but the reflex.
+
+[13]: In a note to Prof. Bastian's "Beginnings of Life" (vol II. p. 537)
+      an important fact is mentioned as obtained from the writings of Dr.
+      Schneider, to wit, that _Nematoids_ (microscopical forms) may be
+      "obtained at will," almost as readily as mushrooms, by a process
+      entirely independent of spores. For instance, small pieces of beef
+      were carefully examined to see if they contained any of the ova of
+      Nematoids, and, finding none, they were buried in a small quantity
+      of earth (also carefully examined for the presence of Nematoids or
+      their ova) in a gallipot. "After three weeks," says Prof. B. "this
+      earth was found to be absolutely swarming with two kinds of
+      Nematoids--quite different from any forms which I had previously,
+      seen, although I had been seeking them for more than two years
+      previously in all sorts of situations." The reason why he had not
+      found them previously, was because the "necessary conditions" for
+      their appearance had not been obtained by him, or he had not sought
+      for them in their proper environment. They were not produced "at
+      will," but were the natural outgrowth of conditions, as much so as
+      the spores of fungi, which make their appearance whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions exist. According to Dr.
+      Gros, it takes about three weeks for these Nematoid forms to develop
+      into a reproductive state.
+
+[14]: The necessity of turning plants and animals into "tramps" is just as
+      great in the case of "Evolution" as in that of "specific creation in
+      pairs." In both cases, we must insist upon geneological
+      consanguinity. For the chances of any two highly specialized forms,
+      originally starting on different lines of divergence, and ultimately
+      reaching individual identity, both in form and characteristics, is
+      an impossible problem in the determination of chances. Consequently,
+      Mr. Darwin finds the necessity of accounting for the presence of
+      northern forms in the southern hemisphere, and the reverse, just as
+      great as in the Linnæan theory, which was fully accepted by Cuvier.
+
+[15]: Burdach, in his "_Traité Physiologie" (Trad. par Jourdan_. 1837)
+      says: "Effectivement nous rencontrons des traces de vie dans toute
+      existence quelconque." This is as broad a panspermic statement as
+      can be made, and is only true of inorganic matter so far as
+      vegetable life is concerned, including such infusorial, mycologic,
+      and cryptogamic forms as may lie so near to the "force vegetative"
+      of Needham as to be indistinguishable from it.
+
+[16]: In the case of volcanic islands, the upheavals were undoubtedly
+      accompanied by deposits of mud, sand (ocean detritus), marine
+      vegetation, and more or less animal matter, and these organic
+      substances were washed down by the rains into the broken valleys and
+      plains below, when land vegetation almost immediately made its
+      appearance; not because seeds may have drifted thither by any of the
+      different agencies that have been mentioned, but because organic
+      matter can no more help bringing forth life in some form, when
+      conditions favor, than salt water, when exposed to evaporation, can
+      help crystallizing into its symmetrically-arranged salts. And the
+      same would be true of all the coral islands, bringing up the organic
+      matter of the sea to the influence of the light, the rains, and the
+      dews. The islands thus formed in the Pacific Ocean begin to exhibit
+      vegetable life almost as soon as they make their appearance above
+      the reefs, and a line of sea-beach is formed about them.
+
+[17]: These, while presenting the most varied and diverse forms of
+      infusorial life, are nevertheless the most constant and abundant
+      type. They abound more or less in all organic infusions. Ehrenberg,
+      however, holds that they are no more animal than vegetal forms. They
+      vary in length from 1/15000 to 1/2000 of an inch, and are
+      consequently too minute to be satisfactorily classified in respect
+      to all their diversified characteristics.
+
+[18]: The extent of the southern ice-cap may at least be approximately
+      reached from explorations already made. Capt. Weddell, in 1823,
+      extended his explorations southward to within about 15° of the
+      south pole, where he found an open sea. Capt. Ross, in 1842,
+      approached to within about 13° of the same pole, without serious
+      obstruction. It is true that, in the following year, he encountered
+      ice barriers near the line of the antarctic circle, but they were
+      floating barriers coming down from Weddell's open sea. Capt.
+      Wilkes, in 1840, explored a considerable portion of the Antarctic
+      Continent, lying almost entirely within the antarctic circle. Other
+      explorations have been made, showing that the southern ice-cap does
+      not probably extend, continuously at least, much farther north than
+      78° or 80°, or to within some ten or twelve degrees of the south
+      pole, independently of the packs of drifting ice in the otherwise
+      open seas.
+
+[19]: The truth or falsity of "Evolution" depends entirely on the
+      successful solution of this problem, for the chances are
+      quintillions to ones that no two identical forms could have
+      originated from different centres, or from the same centre on
+      divergent lines, and ever reached identically the same results. And
+      how any two forms should happen to be sexually paired, on the same
+      or different lines of divergence, is one of those inexplicable
+      mysteries which must puzzle Herbert Spencer in all his labyrinthian
+      searches into "Force-correlation," "Differentiation," "the Dynamic
+      Force of Molecules," etc., etc. However successful he may be in
+      other directions, he will inevitably fail in this. We must fall back
+      on the grand Old Bible genesis for the solution of this difficulty,
+      where every living thing was commanded to produce seed, or multiply
+      and replenish the waters and the earth with offspring.
+
+[20]: These transcendental or ideal forms may be said to correspond to the
+      "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are the eternal, immutable
+      principles which are discernible to the eye of the soul, as the
+      sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of the
+      body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a
+      higher realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of
+      which the objective reality is but the shadow.
+
+[21]: Herbert Spencer may be quoted as authority on this point. He says:
+      "There is invariably, and necessarily, a conformity between the
+      vital functions of any organism, and the _conditions_ in which it is
+      placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a certain range
+      of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation."
+      And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora, each
+      specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north
+      or south from the thermal equator.
+
+[22]: Speaking of the ultimate principles or elements of matter, Plato is
+      quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with modest diffidence, "God alone,
+      and those whom he loves among men, know what they are." It is only
+      those who seek to eliminate God from the universe that speak with
+      confident flippancy on the subject of molecular machinery and
+      force-correlations.
+
+[23]: As long as the evolutionists cannot agree among themselves as to
+      what constitutes the process of evolution, it can hardly be expected
+      that the public will accept their speculations as conclusive
+      inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to the
+      doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many
+      objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word
+      Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."
+
+[24]: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of
+      God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.
+
+[25]: Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the "Protoplasmic Theory of Life,"
+      says: "Matter cannot change its state of motion or rest without the
+      influence of some force from without. True spontaneity of movement
+      is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what we call dead
+      matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an exciting
+      cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial
+      impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this
+      "force from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle
+      operating to effect the otherwise impossible change in matter.
+
+[26]: A favorite set-phrase of Professor Bastian in speaking of
+      morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes calls them.
+
+[27]: That great and justly celebrated naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of
+      the universal origination of the lower forms of animal life by a
+      process termed, in his time, "spontaneous generation," says: "There
+      are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal and vegetable,
+      which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'molécules
+      organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a
+      constant succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for
+      some time associated with the Abbé Needham in his experiments in
+      vital directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by
+      no means certain that he did not accept the Abbé's "force
+      végétative" in place of his more materialistic views respecting
+      "molécules organiques." At all events, his statement that as many
+      living things appear in nature independently of reproducing causes
+      as by successive generation, is no doubt true.
+
+[28]: M. Tréviranus, who followed Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask
+      experimentations, first noticed the important fact that the
+      animalculæ appearing in different organic infusions, depended on
+      the nature and quality of the infusions themselves, and that the
+      changed conditions of the same infusion produced new and independent
+      forms of life.
+
+[29]: Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet, says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin
+      étoit la religion éternelle des Essences; parce que tout ce qui
+      existe existoit comme de toute éternité comme possible ou en idée
+      dans l'entendement de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette vérité sublime en
+      d'autres termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute Eternité
+      dans l'entendement du Suprême Architecte. Tou tes les parties de
+      l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome étoient deffinés dans ce plan.
+      Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux différentes pieces de
+      ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs représentations. Chaque etre y
+      étoit figuré par ses characteres propres: et l'acte par lequel la
+      Souveraine Puissance a réalisé ce plan, est ce que nous nommons la
+      Création."
+
+[30]: Here is a fact given us by Dr. F. Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a
+      peat meadow in that town, owned by him, which was at no time subject
+      to overflow, a large quantity of peat had been removed at different
+      intervals of time, when the excavations naturally filled with water.
+      In these excavations there appeared not only the _Cyprinidae_ in
+      considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which grew to be as
+      large as those in the most favored streams. They made their
+      appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and
+      have flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow
+      were there any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any
+      other source of water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.
+
+[31]: Professor Beale, in one of his very latest works says: "Of the
+      chemical and physical forms of energy something is known, but of
+      the relationship of the so called _vital_ energy, nothing has
+      been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is
+      altogether different from that which has been traced to physical
+      and chemical energy."
+
+[32]: It is admitted, even in the case of _Bacteria_, whose movements are
+      the most uniform, that they are sometimes so inert and languid as to
+      show no movements at all; while, at other times, they exhibit mere
+      Brownian movements or those no more nearly allied to "life" than the
+      minute particles of carbon escaping from the flame of a kerosene
+      lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists, it is a
+      question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most
+      active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in
+      other words, whether they are _Fungus-spores_ or _Torula_-cells, or
+      whether they may not be some intermediate forms.
+
+[33]: The difficulty of assigning any definitional value to a "primordial
+      germ" is due to the vagueness of idea attached to it in the popular
+      mind, as well as to the diversified theories and speculations of the
+      scientists concerning the origin of life. We can only define it as a
+      "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest conceivable
+      quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical unit."
+
+[34]: Let two comrades be shot at the same instant in battle, the one
+      through the heart, and the other through the arm, shattering it
+      badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from taking a piece of
+      bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart and instantly
+      killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still living?
+      Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He
+      may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts
+      might still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the
+      integrity of the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply
+      because the vital principle that differentiates matter is gone--can
+      no longer act. If the integrity of the bone depended on the action
+      of the molecules, and not on the vital principle, there is no reason
+      why this experiment should not be a success. For the molecules are
+      all there, and their action will not be disturbed for hours after
+      the death of the man shot through the heart.
+
+[35]: It is safe to adhere to the Leibnitzian axiom, _Natura non agit
+      saltatim_.
+
+[36]: One of the most cultured classes of Christian believers in our day,
+      holds that "all life is from the Lord;" that "He is the fountain,
+      and we only the streams thence." And this, they claim, is true of
+      all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to cut off this
+      stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the fountain
+      of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause a
+      mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their
+      intermediates.
+
+[37]: Professor Marsh, of Yale College, has predicted that the "missing
+      link" will be found in Borneo--evidently not crediting Mr. Stanley's
+      statement about its presence in the interior of Africa. But one
+      "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an extensive
+      family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest
+      genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half
+      cover the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey
+      and the man being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the
+      first half of the chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions
+      of links, so to speak. How, then, is the greater length of the
+      plexus to be covered by a single "missing link?" A long line of
+      caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore, in Borneo, and shipped to
+      the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous stretch in the chain of
+      animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for. Borneo must be
+      exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the chasm
+      between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal
+      inhabitants, of that island.
+
+[38]: This daring hypothesis of the materialists is so utterly repugnant
+      to all our ideas of a perfected Cosmos, that we have no patience
+      with those advancing it. It is, at best, speculation run mad, and is
+      based on no other assumption than that of the inherent
+      imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God, or
+      from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast
+      geognostic epochs.
+
+      From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility
+      inevitably runs into the _reductio ad absurdum_. For if, in the play
+      of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past
+      time has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting
+      movements and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite
+      duration of time to come can effect nothing but similarly mutual
+      adjustments and re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an
+      infinity of time, space, matter and motion, everywhere presenting a
+      unity of phenomena in the universe, "there can never be anything,"
+      according to the great Stagirite, "unconnected or out of place, as
+      in a bad tragedy." Conservation must, therefore, be the rule, and
+      desinence the impossible exception.
+
+      But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact
+      of vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly
+      appeared, and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as
+      suddenly disappeared, to show that there are mighty disturbances in
+      the sidereal heavens which entirely negative the idea of
+      "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the phenomena of variable
+      stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and
+      fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and
+      well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of
+      extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of
+      Tycho Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the
+      interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty
+      non-luminous or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their
+      respective centres of light and heat, as the attending planets
+      revolve about the common centre of gravity in our own system. And
+      this is especially true of that vast and fathomless star-stratum,
+      called the Milky-way, in which most of these peculiar phenomena
+      occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.
+
+      That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable
+      transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no
+      matter of wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising
+      that these sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater
+      frequency. This would inevitably be the case if the planes of
+      revolution, in the case of these non-luminous bodies about their
+      central orbs, were coincident with the lines of vision from our own
+      planet--a circumstance by no means improbable from the vastness of
+      the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of stars marching
+      therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be accounted for
+      in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their apparent
+      rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our
+      sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation
+      Hercules at the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of
+      Arcturus' flight), it is impossible to determine, in the present
+      state of astronomical knowledge, whether the apparent change of
+      place in any star is real or merely optical. But, in the case of
+      double stars, each is travelling (independently of its other
+      motions) about the common centre of gravity obtaining in its own
+      system, and these relative movements may account for the greater or
+      less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one, present a
+      greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.
+
+      The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus
+      destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified
+      in our own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With
+      stupendous planetary systems revolving about each of these
+      apparently double stars, they must respectively have a revolution,
+      real as well as apparent, about their own centres of gravity--not
+      one and the same centre, but different and far distant centres.
+      Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with planes of movement at
+      right angles with it, they would necessarily present the appearance
+      of one star revolving about the other--an _apparent_ motion only.
+
+      And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of
+      _temporary_ stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens,
+      flaming up into stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and
+      then disappearing altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or
+      _apparent_ stars, was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its
+      maximum brilliancy at the very first, but gradually diminishing in
+      size until the end of seventeen months, when it disappeared, without
+      change of place, from the heavens. This temporary star was visible
+      in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the Milky-way, within whose swarm of
+      stellar worlds most of these apparent stars have made their
+      appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for this stellar
+      phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed and
+      molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the
+      elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses
+      (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation
+      of "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is
+      manifestly too absurd for scientific recognition. A more
+      satisfactory explanation may be here suggested:--Supposing the
+      apparent relative position of any six or seven stars of the sixth
+      magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed by the combined
+      motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as to throw
+      them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered together
+      as to show their several star-discs as one, we should unquestionably
+      have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as long as
+      this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after
+      another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the
+      combined motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from
+      the first to the second magnitude, and so on until it reached the
+      sixth magnitude, when it would pass beyond the reach of unaided
+      human vision. But as the star of Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at
+      its fullest brilliancy, it may be objected that this suggested
+      theory fails to meet the required conditions.
+
+      As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the
+      Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction
+      of stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a
+      century. We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded
+      stars, in great numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that
+      these temporary stars almost uniformly appear in that zone renders
+      the suggestion here made quite as rational, in the way of
+      speculation at least, as that of "vapory celestial matter" suddenly
+      condensed into a star of the first magnitude, as Sir. William
+      Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not probable.
+
+      Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of
+      stars, lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various
+      parts of the heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance
+      of a star of the fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if
+      more thickly clustered, present that of a star of the first
+      magnitude. But powerful telescopes resolve them into a large number
+      of stars, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth magnitude. One such
+      cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been resolved into not less than
+      fifteen hundred small stars of very low magnitude, and pretty widely
+      scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander Von Humboldt, in
+      speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that "their
+      disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any
+      diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces
+      or in their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too
+      weak too excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no
+      longer see is not necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same
+      time the question of Pliny--"_Stellæ an obirent nascerenturve?_"
+
+      But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of
+      these stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There
+      are, for instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant
+      clusters of stars, dark granular spots, of greater or less
+      magnitude, in which the most powerful telescopes show no glints or
+      traces of stars. They are among Humboldt's smaller "fissures or
+      chasms in the heavens," in which he asserts that there is a great
+      paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if one of these thick stellar
+      clusters, which show to the naked eye as a single star, should, by
+      the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system and the stellar
+      group in question, pass into the field of one of these small rents
+      or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of the
+      stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the
+      first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that
+      magnitude so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or
+      fissure. It would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in
+      the clouds of a dark night, and disappear as soon as it had
+      traversed, or apparently traversed, the rift in question. This
+      galactic curtain, it should be borne in mind, is made up of
+      18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less than 720,000,000
+      dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of
+      gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this is
+      unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of
+      the more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch,
+      even in the telescopic field, mere glints of light as the
+      intervening swarms of stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the
+      foreground and shut out the more distant view. It is only through
+      these rents and fissures in this great galactic curtain that the
+      brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever be seen; and these glints
+      of far distant light, showing dimly through this curtain, may
+      account for the peculiar _milky_ appearance of the galaxy, arising
+      from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams themselves. It
+      was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic curtain
+      that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its
+      appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained
+      visible for a period of seventeen months.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+  
+    h1,h2,h3,h4 { text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-variant: small-caps }
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Life: Its True Genesis
+
+Author: R. W. Wright
+
+Posting Date: August 24, 2014 [EBook #9307]
+Release Date: November, 2005
+First Posted: September 19, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <h1>
+      Life: Its True Genesis
+    </h1>
+    <h2 style="margin-top: .5em">
+      By R. W. Wright
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &Omicron;ὗ &tau;ὸ &sigma;&pi;έ&rho;&mu;&alpha; &alpha;ὐ&tau;&omicron;ῦ ἐ&nu;
+      &alpha;ὐ&tau;ῷ &chi;&alpha;&tau;ὰ &gamma;έ&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf; ἐ&pi;ὶ
+      &tau;ῆ&sigmaf; &gamma;ῆ&sigmaf;. [Septuagint.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
+      upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Second Edition
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      1884
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED<br /> TO<br /> ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.<br /> OF
+      CHESHIRE, CONN.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#pref">Prefatory</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chapter I. <a href="#01">Introductory.</a><br /> Chapter II. <a href="#02">Life--Its
+      True Genesis.</a><br /> Chapter III. <a href="#03">Alternations of Forest
+      Growths.</a><br /> Chapter IV. <a href="#04">The Distribution and Vitality
+      of Seeds.</a><br /> Chapter V. <a href="#05">Plant Migration and
+      Interglacial Periods.</a><br /> Chapter VI. <a href="#06">Distribution and
+      Permanence of Species.</a><br /> Chapter VII. <a href="#07">What Is Life?
+      Its Various Theories.</a><br /> Chapter VIII. <a href="#08">Materialistic
+      Theories of Life Refuted.</a><br /> Chapter IX. <a href="#09">Force-Correlation,
+      Differentiation and Other Life Theories.</a><br /> Chapter X. <a href="#10">Darwinism
+      Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.</a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Preface to Second Edition.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
+      that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
+      thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
+      spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
+      is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
+      the tenth verse:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
+      thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (<i>the earth</i>) bring
+      forth and bud (<i>not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth</i>),
+      that it (<i>the earth</i>) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the
+      eater (<i>man being the only sower of seed and eater of bread</i>): so
+      shall my Word be (<i>the Word of Life</i>) that goeth forth out of my
+      mouth (<i>the mouth of the Lord</i>); it shall not return unto me void (<i>i.e.,
+      lifeless</i>), but it shall accomplish that which I (<i>the Lord Jehovah</i>)
+      please, and it (<i>the living Word</i>) shall prosper in the thing whereto
+      I sent it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
+      hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
+      and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
+      come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
+      tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
+      shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
+      and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
+      "Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
+      nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
+      conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
+      by the divine fiat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
+      this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
+      Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
+      history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
+      volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
+      flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
+      on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
+      and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
+      vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
+      as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
+      the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
+      There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
+      in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
+      remarkable formula is taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
+      as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
+      instead of God, in their philosophical writings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after <i>Truth</i> as it is
+      to be found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the
+      temple of science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful
+      consideration. It is only when they become dogmatic, and assert
+      propositions that have no foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe,
+      that we propose to break a lance at their expense, and lay bare their
+      fallacies. We claim nothing more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than
+      we are willing and ready to accord to them. Indeed, we would champion
+      their right to be heard sooner than we would our own, on the principle
+      that it is our duty to be just to others before we are generous to
+      ourselves, or those of our own following. But our Agnostic friends should
+      remember that when they charge us with being "dogmatic in science," the
+      charge should be made good from a scientific stand-point, and not merely
+      by the bandying of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
+      years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
+      we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
+      for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
+      have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
+      they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
+      referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
+      Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
+      the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
+      toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
+      life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
+      ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
+      nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
+      forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
+      without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
+      to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
+      food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
+      dead batrachian inside of one year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
+      between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
+      finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
+      riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
+      there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
+      the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
+      these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
+      any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
+      Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
+      and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
+      boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
+      force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
+      characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
+      sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
+      the road-sides, and the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> scraped into the centre of
+      the road-beds; the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through
+      these wayside rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of
+      oxen to break the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates,
+      shists, sandstones etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more
+      than half an inch in length, were turned out at different seasons of the
+      year, showing that they were produced independently of any parent
+      batrachian, there being no trace of a mother toad in connection with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
+      early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
+      propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
+      they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
+      any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
+      circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
+      in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
+      appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
+      is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
+      by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
+      made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
+      Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
+      sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
+      taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
+      the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
+      almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
+      inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
+      the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
+      where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
+      It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
+      of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
+      of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
+      in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
+      he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
+      expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
+      on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
+      enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
+      not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
+      blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
+      out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common <i>Rana</i>
+      family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
+      similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
+      reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
+      apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet into
+      the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water secured.
+      We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as well as at
+      some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they wanted,
+      remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog, originating
+      therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would make his way
+      to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well enough as one
+      of the <i>Rana</i> family. It was only to our more intelligent neighbors
+      (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we stopped to
+      explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it appears,
+      whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are equally
+      conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water from our
+      cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm sun and air,
+      and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting. The barrel left
+      open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing their little rafts of
+      eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young wigglers that in the
+      course of a week or two made their appearance in the open barrel in
+      immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch out into
+      mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest study, as well
+      as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the proper time they
+      come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable modification in their
+      structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the tormenting little
+      insects that they are during the summer and autumn months in our Northern
+      climate. The object of the covered barrel was to ascertain whether we
+      could reach the conditions favorable for the development of this little
+      pest of the <i>Culex</i> family, independently of the eggs of the insect
+      itself. This required some patience and not a little care. We knew that an
+      egg dropped through the interstices of the netting would sink to the
+      bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as every scientist
+      understanding the process well knows. It must be floated on the water at
+      first, or until it reaches the point of development into a wiggler. The
+      first step in the process of its life is as cunningly devised as the
+      second, and the second as the third, until the full-fledged mosquito is
+      reached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
+      experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
+      demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
+      covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
+      harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
+      water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
+      their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
+      world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
+      we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
+      Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
+      in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
+      acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
+      the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
+      convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
+      ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
+      may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
+      for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
+      question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
+      now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
+      Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
+      that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
+      have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
+      mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
+      little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
+      knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
+      about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
+      especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
+      knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
+      Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
+      the same becoming courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
+      "Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
+      more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
+      other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
+      the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
+      conspicuously in the historic page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
+      frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
+      operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
+      us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
+      batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
+      highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
+      that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
+      earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
+      vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
+      in the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
+      scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
+      have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
+      diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
+      centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
+      environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
+      living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
+      thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
+      their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
+      pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
+      went forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
+      life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
+      Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural <i>habitat</i>
+      of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster
+      climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the extreme limbs
+      of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an
+      error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the common impression
+      that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller mango-trees growing about
+      the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish, as we have said, a natural
+      <i>habitat</i> for the oyster, and as the salt sea-spray washes their
+      roots and the bark of their trunks, the long thin-shelled oysters of that
+      region make their appearance thereon without the presence of spawn, just
+      as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped along our sand-banks in New
+      England. On these dumped shells oysters will be produced abundantly,
+      simply because the conditions are favorable, and not in consequence of the
+      presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any, locomotive power, and can
+      no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale the cliffs of the Azores.
+      The reason why they hang in pendent clusters from the extreme boughs of
+      the mango in the West India Islands is, that these boughs are sprayed upon
+      by the rippling waters, and the environing conditions being favorable, the
+      indifferent oyster of that region makes its appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
+      another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
+      from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
+      nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
+      the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
+      appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
+      previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
+      than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
+      bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
+      will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
+      not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
+      dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
+      of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
+      acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
+      out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
+      and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
+      months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
+      specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
+      University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
+      for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
+      as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
+      the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
+      the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
+      in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
+      periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
+      strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
+      text; as, for instance, the <i>Trilobites</i>, occurring so abundantly in
+      what is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their
+      appearance, whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this
+      fossil, characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not
+      so much in time and place as in extended localities and
+      conditions--indicating the presence of a law of life such as we have
+      enunciated. We once inquired of the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took
+      for the formation of one of these periods or systems? His reply was curt
+      and pertinent: "It took long enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the
+      time, and we have never asked the question since. It is prying beyond
+      scientific depth, and the ablest scholars in the world will so regard it
+      in the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
+      governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "<i>similia
+      similibus gignuntur</i>"--similar conditions producing similar
+      forms--obtains universally. The <i>Graptolites</i>, occurring in the
+      bituminous shales of the Silurian sandstone period, afford only another
+      instance of the same law to which we have called the attention of our
+      readers. In fact, the annals of natural history abound in the most
+      conclusive proofs, as well in the fossilized as the living world, of what
+      the paramount text of the Bible teaches us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
+      minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
+      Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
+      rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
+      great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
+      induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
+      he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
+      several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
+      be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
+      Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
+      than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
+      true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
+      spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
+      command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
+      of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
+      study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
+      every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
+      amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
+      paper on the <i>Arch&aelig;opterix</i>, rescued from the lithographic
+      slate, is a case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of
+      accomplishing a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the
+      paper was trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so
+      with every one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to
+      attain success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
+      not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
+      have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
+      the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
+      strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
+      upon the Matterhorn!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
+      be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
+      the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
+      of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
+      least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
+      themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
+      that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
+      the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
+      mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
+      "Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
+      the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
+      period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
+      physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
+      expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
+      materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
+      and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
+      took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
+      we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
+      which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
+      least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
+      defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
+      Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
+      English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
+      pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
+      Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
+      Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
+      other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
+      twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
+      events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
+      place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
+      unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
+      is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
+      appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
+      of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
+      of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
+      institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
+      know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
+      command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
+      not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
+      of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
+      power of life in matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
+      their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
+      asserts they originally came from.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
+      thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
+      earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
+      changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
+      energy intervene!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
+      our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
+      material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
+      his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
+      the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
+      word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
+      sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
+      purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
+      light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
+      with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
+      millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
+      the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
+      over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
+      it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
+      takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
+      where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
+      higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
+      dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
+      Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
+      Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
+      of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
+      We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
+      conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
+      for good or for evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
+      our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
+      doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
+      at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to <i>The
+      National Quarterly Review</i>, for the captious manner in which it treated
+      us after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
+      two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by
+      a class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error
+      and enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
+      criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
+      thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
+      several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
+      had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
+      as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
+      handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
+      science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
+      materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
+      the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
+      adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
+      so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
+      respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
+      content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
+      fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
+      waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
+      of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
+      and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
+      Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
+      by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
+      unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
+      demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
+      was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
+      writer's own face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
+      in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
+      indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
+      our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as <i>The National
+      Quarterly Review</i> speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
+      friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
+      if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
+      for them to regret, and for us to deplore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
+      thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
+      what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
+      thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,<br /> Like wayside
+        flowers that lift their heads, aglow<br /> With a far sweeter fragrance
+        when they've been<br /> All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,<br /> Than
+        when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain<br /> The long night through,
+        and wake at early dawn<br /> To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      R. W. Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      West Cheshier, Conn., <i>Oct</i>. 12, 1883.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="pref" id="pref"></a>Prefatory.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
+      public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
+      introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
+      may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
+      salutation untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
+      traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
+      and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
+      conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: <i>That
+      the primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
+      things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
+      they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions exist</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
+      the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
+      the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
+      The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
+      Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
+      Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
+      biblical and scientific scholar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
+      that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
+      named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
+      we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
+      imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
+      into the same lines of incidence in human thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Science has long taught that the <i>absence</i> of necessary physiological
+      conditions results everywhere in the <i>disappearance</i> of vital
+      phenomena; by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the <i>presence</i>
+      of these necessary conditions results everywhere in the <i>appearance</i>
+      of vital phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe,
+      where it is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak,
+      after each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many
+      thousand years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the
+      pine paved the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the
+      beech. Neither sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the
+      fittest" have anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of
+      either. Each yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal
+      principle of life) was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the
+      earth, and made its appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the
+      presence of natural seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions
+      favored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
+      the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
+      forests where pine have been cleared away, and <i>vice versa</i>, in some
+      parts of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled.
+      So with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
+      over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
+      glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
+      find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
+      without the possible intervention of natural seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
+      Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
+      years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
+      undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
+      century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
+      roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
+      them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
+      of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
+      the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
+      points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
+      subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Iren&aelig;us, this Greek version was rendered at the request
+      of Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian
+      library, and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and
+      Hellenistic scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that
+      day,--employed upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount
+      authority to our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the
+      highest and most conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and
+      the "new genesis of life" we derive therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &Sigma;&pi;έ&rho;&mu;&alpha; (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost
+      an identical signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "<i>germ</i>
+      of anything," or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in
+      anything that lives or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its
+      literal sense of "seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was
+      issued, there was no plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon
+      the earth from which seed could have been derived. The word was used in
+      its larger and more comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the
+      "germinal principle of life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which
+      the Greek stoics used it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and
+      Diogenes use the terms &sigma;&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&alpha;&tau;´&kappa;&omicron;ὶ
+      &gamma;ό&gamma;&omicron;&iota; expressing "the <i>laws of generation
+      contained in matter</i>"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its
+      textual connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows:
+      "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the
+      fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, <i>whose germinal principle of
+      life, each in itself after its kind, is upon the earth</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
+      complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
+      scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
+      Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
+      The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
+      rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
+      development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
+      do with the '<i>odium theologicum</i>?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury
+      both theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
+      agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
+      scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
+      nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
+      the Hebrew <i>Hagiographa</i>, of what less value is it to science than if
+      it had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
+      inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
+      science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
+      Herbert Spencer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
+      all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
+      longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
+      operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
+      speculation to pry. We know what nature <i>does</i>, or may know it by the
+      proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
+      than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
+      the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
+      science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
+      without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
+      an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
+      tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
+      land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
+      bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
+      as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
+      endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
+      requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
+      oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
+      primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
+      organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
+      gemmule, thousands of years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
+      thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
+      our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
+      theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
+      rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
+      transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
+      <i>mol&eacute;cules organiques</i>, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
+      "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formul&aelig;,
+      with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
+      or twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
+      speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
+      and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
+      motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
+      the public. [<a href="#foot1">1</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R. W. Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      West Cheshire, Conn.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      True Genesis.
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="01"></a>Chapter I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Introductory.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
+      speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
+      tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
+      utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
+      conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
+      prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
+      current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
+      rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
+      more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
+      speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
+      have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
+      substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
+      persistent elements in the universe--<i>Matter</i> and <i>Motion</i>.
+      Everything else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or
+      else essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
+      theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
+      two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
+      conclusions respecting matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
+      and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
+      claim, of one and the same force in the universe--<i>Motion</i>, With the
+      exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
+      ever active and reactive agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
+      more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
+      or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
+      postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
+      of molecules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
+      Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
+      unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
+      stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
+      special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
+      transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
+      exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
+      its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
+      because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
+      averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
+      speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
+      among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
+      last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
+      who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
+      the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
+      as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
+      ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
+      the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
+      dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
+      life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
+      mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
+      of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
+      non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
+      the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
+      beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
+      or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
+      all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, <i>de
+      novo</i>? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he
+      hardly allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as
+      applied to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as
+      terms to provoke both incredulity and derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
+      professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
+      as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
+      most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
+      of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
+      and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
+      enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
+      laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
+      putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
+      cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
+      dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
+      mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
+      the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
+      nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
+      nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
+      conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
+      greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
+      either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
+      logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
+      only a negative conclusion shall follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life is neither matter nor motion,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore: Life is not indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
+      distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
+      incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
+      neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
+      thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
+      illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
+      that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
+      without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
+      embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
+      have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
+      to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
+      such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
+      realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
+      that this conscious <i>ego</i>--this thing that conceives, thinks,
+      ascribes attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates
+      it in the order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the
+      argument--we are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to
+      the theological conception of a God--the one supreme <i>Ego</i> of the
+      universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
+      apprehensive intelligence, is derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
+      order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
+      constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
+      inductions:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Cause must exist before effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Without some vital principle, therefore, pre&euml;xisting as a cause,
+      there can be no life-manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
+      an effect?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
+      both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
+      incongruent and conflictive judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
+      whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. Hence Life, either as a pre&euml;xisting cause or vital agency, must
+      precede both animal and vegetal organism. Again:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
+      which is produced by an operating cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
+      as an operating cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
+      must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
+      cause before there is any produced effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
+      equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
+      be can no matter without an existing <i>ego</i>, in some state of
+      consciousness in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it
+      attributes.[<a href="#foot2">2</a>] On what, therefore, are we to
+      predicate the existence of either matter or motion, except it be these
+      intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as we have any
+      knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that "breath of
+      life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if
+      our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality. All is as
+      unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a rock," or
+      Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once defined a
+      fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
+      "materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
+      them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
+      both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
+      potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
+      consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
+      which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
+      that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
+      with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
+      force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
+      God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
+      dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
+      crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
+      resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
+      syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
+      infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
+      successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
+      act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
+      conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
+      world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
+      that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
+      demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
+      admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
+      admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
+      which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
+      laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
+      remain as they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
+      disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the <i>Hagiographa</i>, or
+      "sacred writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical
+      scholar that some of the most important discoveries in modern science,
+      especially in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological
+      research and inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more
+      explicit utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy,
+      that whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of
+      battle, as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates
+      of the latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of
+      controversy and achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth
+      of this statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the
+      more important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be
+      found that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked,
+      much neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key
+      that unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now
+      waging between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe,
+      it will most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in
+      no equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
+      volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
+      be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
+      value as in the first chapter of Genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
+      translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
+      and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
+      only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
+      Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent system
+      of world-structures which regards the universe as originally consisting of
+      uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence "without form and
+      void," but which subsequently became aggregated by gravitation into an
+      infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+      space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
+      suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
+      of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
+      evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
+      epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
+      "gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
+      matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
+      universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
+      man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
+      order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
+      and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
+      the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
+      great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
+      rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
+      stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
+      for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
+      firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
+      Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
+      fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
+      life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
+      distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
+      nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
+      turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
+      was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
+      "guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
+      this most remarkable genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
+      which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
+      explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
+      either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
+      and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
+      law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
+      in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
+      would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
+      Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
+      ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
+      theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
+      excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
+      earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
+      necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
+      the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
+      occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
+      mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
+      organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
+      hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
+      (except man) "after his kind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
+      of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
+      that of materialistic science:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE BIBLE GENESIS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
+      Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
+      no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as <i>perfect</i> of
+      its kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or
+      "germs," declared to be in themselves upon the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
+      every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
+      plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
+      field "before it grew."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
+      bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
+      therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
+      firmament of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
+      every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
+      which they appear in geological distribution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
+      he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
+      every other living creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
+      life," and he became a "living soul,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
+      man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
+      the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
+      face of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
+      man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
+      the angels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
+      universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
+      myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
+      through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
+      infinite duration of time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less <i>imperfect</i>
+      of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some underlying law of
+      variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual development from
+      lower into higher organisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
+      agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
+      its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
+      at best, only a sort of <i>tertium quid</i> between matter and motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
+      birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
+      progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
+      constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
+      of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
+      gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
+      creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
+      constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
+      organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
+      genera, or species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
+      respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
+      up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
+      until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
+      thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known moral
+      factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the social
+      instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree only, not
+      in kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
+      purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
+      adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
+      all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
+      indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
+      tiger, or they dominion over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
+      expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
+      God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
+      end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
+      become endowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
+      than the apes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
+      Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
+      conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
+      devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
+      least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
+      as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
+      represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
+      implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
+      <i>ZRA</i>, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of
+      Genesis, from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his
+      "Critica Sacra," first published in 1662:--"<i>Sparsit, asparsit, cum
+      aspersione fudit, diffudit</i>," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered,
+      universally diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That
+      the Hebrew word <i>ZRA</i>. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of
+      a plant or tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree,
+      from which "seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
+      is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the "<i>diversa
+      diversorum viventium primordia</i>" of Dr. William Harvey, were originally
+      implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and biologist, the
+      discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught the doctrine
+      expressed in his phrase "<i>omne vivum ex ovo</i>," but that of
+      "primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
+      in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
+      more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
+      receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
+      into a living organism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
+      vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
+      from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
+      unit--or whether it originates <i>de novo</i>, as the materialists assert,
+      from infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
+      particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
+      hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
+      certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
+      basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
+      indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
+      be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
+      hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
+      necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
+      effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
+      conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
+      trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
+      rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
+      materialistic dogma, <i>nihil ex nihilo</i>, would necessitate a like
+      induction wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues
+      is manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
+      seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
+      the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
+      thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
+      environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
+      environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
+      ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
+      point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
+      back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
+      form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
+      such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
+      the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
+      but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
+      forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
+      or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
+      itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
+      the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
+      conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
+      "primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
+      whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
+      everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
+      new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
+      wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
+      point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
+      knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
+      theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
+      a tiger in an Indian jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teach us to know what nature <i>does</i>, not what she <i>is</i>; and
+      whatever of "divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in
+      the majestic "Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses,
+      in the "myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic
+      soul of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired
+      authors themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted
+      their inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
+      contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
+      and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
+      because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
+      all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
+      Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
+      machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
+      at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
+      by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
+      will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
+      the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
+      assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
+      speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
+      molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
+      ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
+      to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
+      proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
+      advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
+      connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
+      growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
+      seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
+      forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
+      domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
+      never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
+      our position, that the Bible Genesis contains <i>the true key to the
+      mystery of life</i>. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever
+      it shall be reached in human conception and formulated into
+      definitely-known processes of action, must satisfactorily explain all
+      life-manifestations, as Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the
+      movements of all celestial bodies. And the simpler the theory when once
+      formulated--the more perfectly it falls into the grooves of
+      definitely-expressed thought, and the more harmoniously it adapts itself
+      to all vital manifestations--the more conclusive must be the induction on
+      which it rests.[<a href="#foot3">3</a>] The emphatic statement that the
+      "primordial germs" of all living things are in the earth, from the lowest
+      infusorial form to the highest vital organism below "specifically-created"
+      man, when supplemented by the scientific statement that "vital units" make
+      their appearance whenever environing conditions favor, is conclusively a
+      theory which accounts for all the life-manifestations heretofore occurring
+      upon our globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
+      thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
+      there is functional activity; while a state, or <i>status</i>, is an
+      incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of
+      these--life and its <i>status</i>--there must lie some efficient cause,
+      producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the
+      functional activity dependent on organization. To assume that this
+      efficient cause is simply the effect or result of organization--one of its
+      dependent conditions--is begging the whole question, and, at the same
+      time, discarding a very important element in the problem--that of
+      conditional environment. What this efficient cause <i>is</i>, is a
+      question that awakens no responsive inquiry. It strikes its roots too
+      deeply into the intuitions of consciousness for the soul to give back an
+      intelligible reply. Certain it is that neither metaphysical speculation,
+      nor scientific inquiry, will ever enable us to reach the roots of this
+      question, or extract from them the first quantitive essence of life
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
+      life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
+      their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
+      founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
+      the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
+      <i>animus</i> of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the
+      great central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural,
+      spiritual, eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand
+      corner-stone of all religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians,
+      the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of
+      farther India. Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and
+      most effective blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely
+      assailed and overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the
+      more imposing and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find,
+      in none of the great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of
+      scientific men, the slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject
+      worthy of consideration at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre
+      definitional place in the dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive
+      encyclopedias have no room for it, except as it may be defined, under some
+      correlate of motion, as "the latent possibility of a nebula," or of
+      "undifferentiated primeval mist," originally pervading the interplanetary
+      spaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
+      Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
+      experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
+      purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
+      the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
+      after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
+      investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
+      against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
+      whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
+      "life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
+      necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
+      are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
+      facts only, and the latter entirely on <i>pre</i>conceived and <i>pre</i>judicial
+      notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
+      objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
+      the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
+      themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
+      potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
+      must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
+      theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
+      God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
+      heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
+      of the universe:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God
+      the soul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
+      science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
+      household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
+      more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
+      dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
+      for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
+      represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
+      the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
+      industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
+      number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
+      gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
+      controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
+      statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
+      scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
+      has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
+      achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
+      science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
+      this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
+      materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
+      why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
+      of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
+      slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
+      more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
+      Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
+      to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
+      refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
+      man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
+      much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
+      Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
+      between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
+      and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
+      primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
+      whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
+      arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
+      shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
+      thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
+      maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
+      span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
+      no daring mortal could ever pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
+      necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
+      construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
+      "Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
+      as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
+      would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
+      continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
+      the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
+      manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
+      advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
+      of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
+      organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
+      foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
+      either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
+      this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
+      variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
+      substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
+      differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
+      re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
+      exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
+      potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
+      abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
+      and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bridge will never be built.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="02"></a>Chapter II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Life--Its True Genesis.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
+      the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
+      that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
+      celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
+      admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
+      observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
+      that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
+      the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
+      principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
+      force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
+      governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
+      rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
+      instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
+      the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
+      comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
+      upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
+      "correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
+      demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
+      way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
+      fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
+      the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
+      streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
+      along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
+      wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
+      life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
+      flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
+      spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[<a href="#foot4">4</a>]
+      For like all living principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die.
+      It is immortal in its primal source, immortal all along its bright
+      pathway, immortal as it flows onward to eternity, immortal in its return
+      to the bosom of God. It is no postulate, no corollary, no mere
+      hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered correlative of motion," no
+      "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one grand comprehensive <i>Datum</i>
+      on which all the objective, as well as subjective, data of the universe
+      rest. It is the same "spirit that moved upon the face of the depths," in
+      that majestic Dawn of Creation when the "evening and the morning were the
+      first day;" the same spirit that "upholds the order of the heavens;" that
+      pervades the vast realm of Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight,
+      descends in the loving raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in
+      the murmuring stream, and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness
+      to the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
+      up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
+      because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
+      artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
+      handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
+      Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
+      no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
+      undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
+      complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
+      affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
+      spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
+      which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
+      slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
+      travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
+      called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
+      purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
+      Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
+      physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
+      "Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
+      action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
+      that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
+      as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
+      were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+      And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
+      field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
+      opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
+      recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
+      the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
+      doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
+      genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
+      renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
+      statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
+      comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
+      the command "to bring forth" was issued:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, <i>the
+      fowl of the air</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
+      and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. <i>Let us make man in our own image</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
+      with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
+      Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
+      This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
+      paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
+      crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
+      the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
+      post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
+      life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
+      the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
+      writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
+      origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
+      geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
+      written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
+      Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the <i>Cosmos</i> to escape him,
+      would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
+      was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
+      and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
+      creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
+      observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
+      appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
+      primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
+      vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
+      of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
+      inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
+      primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
+      inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
+      inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
+      answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
+      decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
+      process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
+      primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
+      declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
+      successfully entered upon by the Abb&eacute; Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet,
+      and others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
+      co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
+      established by inductive methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nihil ex nihilo</i> is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as <i>omne
+      vivum ex vivo.</i> That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary
+      least considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without
+      some vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
+      manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
+      and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
+      greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
+      two of a physiological or vital unit? [<a href="#foot5">5</a>] At all
+      events, it is as impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one
+      unit as the other. And so long as legitimate induction supports the
+      doctrine of the Bible Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary
+      assumption which is wholly without verification or proof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
+      the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
+      of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
+      there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
+      vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
+      way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
+      Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
+      vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
+      command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
+      what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
+      Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
+      before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
+      did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
+      conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
+      years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
+      genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
+      metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
+      which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
+      contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
+      should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
+      other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
+      of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
+      science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
+      credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
+      disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
+      interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
+      the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
+      is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
+      conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
+      it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
+      disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
+      distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
+      disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
+      supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
+      formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
+      incredibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
+      inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
+      we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
+      interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
+      translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
+      --contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
+      "mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand <i>questio
+      vexata</i> of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs
+      of all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (<i>i.e.</i>
+      each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
+      physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
+      formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
+      hitherto occurring upon our globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
+      Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
+      experiments of the renowned Abb&eacute; Spallanzani--all the alleged
+      "fantastic assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism,"
+      by whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "<i>molecules
+      organiques,</i>" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all
+      the <i>primordia viventium</i> of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular
+      machinery" and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert
+      Spencer and Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of
+      life ever spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find
+      that they all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the
+      Bible Genesis, <i>and all are explained by them.</i> We say <i>all</i>,
+      with one exception only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and
+      majestic this exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came
+      from no "muddy vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him
+      into existence. He who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was
+      to be created only a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God
+      created He him." And, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, <i>he
+      became a living soul</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
+      without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
+      chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
+      Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
+      yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
+      defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
+      so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
+      awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
+      primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
+      myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
+      the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
+      Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because <i>you</i> cannot
+      annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
+      compass of <i>your</i> brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
+      intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at <i>His</i> sovereign
+      and commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the
+      threshold of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of
+      spirit, and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or
+      "multiplieth words without knowledge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
+      It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
+      God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
+      abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
+      power of God which operates (continuously operates) <i>to impart life to
+      inanimate nature.</i>[<a href="#foot6">6</a>] From the connection in which
+      it here stands it means this, as in other connections it means the power
+      which operates (continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and
+      good (God-like) in man. There is no implication in the text that this
+      life-giving principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On
+      the contrary, there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just
+      as operative now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given
+      by Professor Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout
+      inanimate nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased
+      its operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
+      connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
+      aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
+      animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of mind.[<a
+      href="#foot7">7</a>] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a
+      part nature, and a part not nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the <i>ZRA</i>.
+      the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
+      thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
+      own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
+      commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
+      forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
+      first received its <i>baptism of life</i> from God--in other words,
+      derived the animating principle of life from the source of all Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
+      Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
+      give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the vegetation
+      of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused to be
+      produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a definite and
+      comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the animating
+      principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most remarkable
+      genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic idea, namely,
+      that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor any specific act
+      of creation, were what governed in the case of both vegetal and animal
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione natur&aelig; non quseritur
+      miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
+      Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
+      that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
+      for all time. But we are not seeking for early and medi&aelig;val
+      authority. What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly
+      obeying just such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring
+      forth," however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the
+      opinion of our modern scientists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
+      definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
+      vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
+      allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
+      living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
+      hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
+      uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
+      to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
+      not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
+      own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral <i>plexus</i>, and
+      Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
+      and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
+      <i>a priori</i> induction will ever extend this line <i>or plexus</i> to
+      man. The developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital
+      link that will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift
+      the latter up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain
+      specifically in his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies,
+      upwards or downwards.[<a href="#foot8">8</a>] And this word "type" implies
+      a fundamental ground-plan--an archetype--an original conception of what
+      each should unconditionally be, and what plane each should as
+      unconditionally occupy. Man's place in nature can never be changed or
+      modified by materialistic speculations. Whatever theories the materialists
+      may spin into the unsubstantial warp and woof of their scientific formul&aelig;
+      respecting life, will never stand before the tenacious and stubborn
+      physiological facts which almost any thoroughly-informed and well-read
+      scholar of nature may readily present against them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
+      life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors whose
+      theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all his
+      rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him, this
+      unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the <i>genetrix
+      omnium viventium</i>, or the living <i>mother</i> on whose bosom he shall
+      rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields beyond.
+      Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails not to
+      perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal principles of
+      life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the forests in which he
+      had previously hunted the deer, other and different forest growths are
+      constantly making their appearance, without any apparent intervention of
+      seeds, but not without the supervisional care and direction of the Great
+      Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie grasses have disappeared, only
+      to give place to the more nutritious <i>gramma</i> coveted by his favorite
+      game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
+      against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
+      to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
+      which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
+      behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
+      will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
+      the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
+      infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
+      But how about the pre&euml;xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon,
+      the megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
+      period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
+      did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
+      and we will answer it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
+      all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
+      matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
+      modifications, combinations, etc.,[<a href="#foot9">9</a>] chemically as
+      well as molecularly considered. This, they claim, is not a mere
+      hypothetical judgment, but a mathematically demonstrable proposition.
+      Grant it for the sake of the argument, and then see if the mastodon does
+      not promptly emerge from some one of their "experimental flasks," as they
+      choose to put it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
+      etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
+      statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
+      well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
+      some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
+      plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
+      materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
+      conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
+      as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
+      must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
+      some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
+      number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
+      molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
+      possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
+      infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
+      cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
+      occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
+      follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
+      or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
+      Intelligence" of the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
+      era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
+      their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
+      more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
+      for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
+      concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
+      possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
+      essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
+      All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
+      an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
+      were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
+      theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
+      or the first fungus-spore. [<a href="#foot10">10</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
+      both plants and animals have <i>disappeared</i> from the earth for the
+      want of the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and
+      flourished. What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that
+      they originally <i>appeared</i> from the presence of these identical
+      conditions, whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have
+      occurred? We put this question not simply because the Bible Genesis
+      asserts that "<i>out of the ground</i> made the Lord God to grow" every
+      plant of the field "before it was in the earth," as well as every herb of
+      the field "before it grew;" nor because it declares that their primordial
+      germs are in the earth; nor because it speaks of the earth as containing
+      within itself the "animating principle of life." But we put it on the
+      irrefragable logic of the materialist's own premises and conclusions. They
+      may use other and different physiological terms from what we should care
+      to employ, but their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force,"
+      their "highly differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing
+      more than what we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital
+      conditions," etc. Their preference for the terms they employ, over
+      essential "qualities" or "properties" of matter, is entirely due to the
+      obvious invalidity of their conclusions, except as their physical theory
+      of life may help them out of an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more
+      convenient term on which to allege the <i>de novo</i> origin of life--its
+      spontaneous manifestation in their experimental flasks--than any vital
+      principle primarily inhering in matter, and manifesting itself whenever
+      conditions favor. It is to validate their own reasoning that they
+      construct their fallacious force-premises, from which to draw their
+      materialistic inductions. In other words, theirs is the fallacy of <i>non
+      causa pro causa,</i> or that vicious process of reasoning which alleges
+      some other than the real cause of vital manifestation, and fastens
+      induction where none is legitimately inferable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
+      that in all life-manifestations there must be some pre&euml;xisting vital
+      force or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or
+      animal, can come into existence.[<a href="#foot11">11</a>] M. Pouchet
+      says: "I have always thought that organized beings were animated by forces
+      which are in no way reducible to physical or chemical forces." The Abb&eacute;
+      Needham is satisfied to formulate a "force v&eacute;getative," so far as
+      plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably falls back on vital force or
+      energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique," which is essentially
+      inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations. According to the
+      latter, the whole universe is an "<i>organisme absolu</i>" constantly
+      endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all conceivable
+      directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
+      interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
+      theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
+      is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
+      distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
+      For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
+      from all vital manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
+      of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
+      transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
+      and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
+      conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
+      solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
+      among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
+      of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [<a
+      href="#foot12">12</a>] which merely fluctuates more or less in its ever
+      persistent parts, and moreover, day by day, completes and transforms
+      itself by means of reproduction." But this attempt to give a poetic
+      glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's speculations, and bring his
+      commanding name into support of the evolution theory of development, will
+      prove utterly futile in the light of his "archetype," and the persistency
+      with which he concedes that nature adheres to perfected forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Goethe accepts the doctrine of <i>vis centripeta</i>, beyond the influence
+      of which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying
+      or variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
+      variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
+      inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
+      not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned <i>by</i>
+      circumstances <i>to</i> circumstances," as the eagle to the air and
+      mountain top, the mole to the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to
+      the water in which he frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and
+      the night air. We should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after
+      the Great Architect's pattern, <i>to</i> circumstances, and is only varied
+      <i>by</i> circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of
+      variability. For the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal
+      pattern, after which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals
+      has been fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose
+      mind, or rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
+      archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this <i>Archeus</i>
+      pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from the mind
+      of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but from the
+      one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all living things
+      were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that world "which,"
+      according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that is contained
+      sensibly in our world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
+      influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
+      modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
+      types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
+      way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
+      nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
+      then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
+      attribute to nature a <i>purpose</i> to modify persistent forms under a
+      law that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
+      archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
+      intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
+      type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
+      therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
+      or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
+      predetermining will or agency in the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
+      thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
+      character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
+      before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
+      effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
+      would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
+      itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
+      materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
+      one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
+      reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
+      and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
+      entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
+      ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
+      co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
+      personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
+      obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
+      not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
+      spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
+      fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
+      ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
+      angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
+      worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
+      ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
+      other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
+      machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
+      language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
+      and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
+      majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
+      iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
+      Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
+      two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
+      should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
+      inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
+      screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
+      greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
+      science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
+      the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
+      or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
+      words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
+      manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="03"></a>Chapter III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Alternations of Forest Growths.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
+      alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
+      apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
+      wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
+      been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
+      their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
+      ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
+      satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
+      phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
+      these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
+      scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
+      ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
+      And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
+      of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
+      only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
+      these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
+      lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
+      noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
+      Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
+      question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
+      any very important new facts given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
+      think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
+      collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
+      ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
+      ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
+      implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
+      silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
+      remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
+      themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
+      that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
+      of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
+      further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
+      the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
+      waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
+      with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
+      11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
+      specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
+      this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
+      by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
+      but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
+      and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
+      determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
+      genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
+      treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
+      to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
+      species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
+      the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
+      over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
+      centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
+      belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
+      again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
+      have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
+      causes; but, in many instances, <i>this explanation is not probable</i>."
+      It is manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this
+      connection, in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed"
+      any other germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits
+      that, in many instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the
+      dissemination of seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the
+      exploded notion that vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous
+      instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages in the
+      earth." He further says, in the same connection, that "their vitality
+      seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which
+      nature deposits them;" although he is reluctant to accept the accounts of
+      "the growth of seeds which had lain for ages in the ashy dryness of the
+      Egyptian catacombs," believing that they should be received with great
+      caution, if not rejected altogether. But why he should scruple about
+      receiving these speculative accounts of ancient Egyptian cereals, which
+      are sometimes hawked about the country for two and three dollars a seed,
+      and, in the same breath, accept the absurder theory that seeds may lie
+      dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and most enduring woods will
+      utterly perish and disappear in a few brief years, is wholly inexplicable
+      to us, except as an hypothesis to force a conclusion, or to account for
+      the otherwise unaccountable alternations of forest growths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
+      seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
+      entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would be
+      protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and other
+      assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr. Dwight,
+      for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by actual
+      observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and thoroughly
+      surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils below the last
+      glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach them. As the
+      accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the
+      purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a nine-days
+      wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the indestructibility
+      of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a like purpose in
+      imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly be accepted by the
+      intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light of all the facts
+      herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are speedily perishable
+      by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed that will survive
+      beyond the second year when subjected to such exposure. If they do not
+      germinate the first year, their vitality is utterly gone the second year,
+      as hopelessly so as if they had been cast into the fire and consumed to
+      ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
+      the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
+      brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
+      entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
+      in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
+      remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
+      calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
+      and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
+      rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
+      burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
+      found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
+      Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
+      waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
+      which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
+      Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
+      Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
+      depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
+      must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
+      brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
+      wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
+      did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
+      species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
+      us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
+      microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
+      any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
+      examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
+      large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
+      But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
+      the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
+      seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
+      this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
+      newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
+      is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
+      sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
+      hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
+      neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
+      oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
+      entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
+      the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
+      while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
+      "germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
+      growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
+      in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
+      natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
+      the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
+      natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
+      "vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
+      "the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
+      has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
+      instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
+      implicitly followed since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
+      York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
+      Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
+      growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
+      ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
+      the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
+      trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
+      poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
+      spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
+      tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
+      fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
+      replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
+      supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
+      not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
+      altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
+      tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
+      and growth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
+      communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
+      fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
+      1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
+      oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
+      propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
+      too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
+      special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
+      immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
+      natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
+      storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
+      was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
+      that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
+      "had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
+      prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
+      neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
+      nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
+      promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
+      unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
+      season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
+      the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
+      before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
+      alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and through
+      forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was possible
+      that their seeds could have been derived. One of these tornadoes the
+      writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South Alabama, and he
+      is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that the instances are
+      rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean path of a tornado,
+      through any of our primitive forests, has been succeeded by the same
+      growth of timber as that borne down by the winds. Where the path of this
+      ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine forest, a clean growth of
+      oak was buttressed on either side by pine; and <i>vice versa</i>, where it
+      swept an oak forest. And it is certain that the tornado, whenever it may
+      have occurred, could have exhibited no such discriminating freak as
+      alternately to distribute acorns in pine growths, and pine cones in oak
+      growths, either to make good a scientific theory or balk an unscientific
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
+      years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
+      was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
+      been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
+      had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
+      taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
+      deciduous, and <i>vice versa.</i> We have any number of well authenticated
+      facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
+      place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
+      which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
+      swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
+      without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (<i>Larix Americana</i>)
+      may be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded
+      by the balsam fir (<i>Abies balsamea</i>), which may be probably caused by
+      the partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen
+      tree that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for
+      a period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
+      extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
+      state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
+      manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
+      soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
+      accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
+      for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
+      that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
+      considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
+      granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
+      in the interest of speculative parties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
+      found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
+      country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
+      swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
+      artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
+      appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
+      latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
+      the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
+      for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
+      in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
+      growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
+      the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
+      growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
+      favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
+      swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
+      nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
+      the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
+      all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
+      Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
+      all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
+      the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
+      of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
+      Bible genesis nowhere affirms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
+      Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
+      dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
+      the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
+      evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
+      growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
+      "seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
+      stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
+      the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
+      genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
+      locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
+      his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
+      conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
+      practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
+      philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
+      rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
+      fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
+      adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
+      by an oak forest, <i>where there were a few oaks previously scattered
+      through the woods to furnish seed.</i>" This is a very cautious, as well
+      as circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made,
+      had his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz,
+      Professor Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously
+      scattered through the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical
+      considerations" taken into account by him, as a philosophical botanist
+      rather than a practical one. They were necessary for the extreme caution
+      with which he would state a proposition when its "conditioning facts" were
+      not fully known by him. His anxiety to account for the appearance of an
+      oak forest in the place of a pine, where the latter had been cut off, was
+      commendable enough to justify him in a pretty broad supposition, but not
+      in any such general statement as he here makes. Had he consulted any of
+      the older inhabitants of Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his
+      own state, he would have found that not a few oak forests had succeeded
+      the pine without the intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered
+      acorns, in the localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of
+      distribution have been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in
+      localties where the shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white
+      oak itself. No squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get
+      hickory nuts, and few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and
+      thinner-shelled walnuts are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is
+      provident, but no more so than he is fastidious in the choice of his food.
+      He never plants acorns except for his own gratification, and is never
+      gratified with indifferent food so long as he can command that which is to
+      his liking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
+      necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
+      inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
+      indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
+      fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
+      correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded <i>by a
+      spontaneous growth of trees of another kind.</i>" In the sense in which he
+      manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
+      might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
+      that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
+      seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the <i>Acer</i> family
+      excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
+      a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
+      chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
+      A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
+      accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
+      tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
+      nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
+      generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
+      we advance in this work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
+      unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
+      operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
+      adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
+      in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
+      called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
+      almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
+      Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
+      is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
+      spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
+      mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
+      following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
+      places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
+      etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
+      expressed at the asking of the question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
+      Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
+      for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
+      conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
+      They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
+      the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
+      "spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
+      with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
+      meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
+      conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
+      trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
+      lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
+      facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
+      presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
+      to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
+      distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
+      native forest from which seed could have been derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
+      town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
+      had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
+      "yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, <i>where there was not a
+      single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the place</i>."
+      Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white pine, of
+      which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory." He is
+      greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
+      readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
+      by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
+      Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
+      them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
+      caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
+      might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
+      grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
+      provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
+      locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
+      have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
+      and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
+      Bible genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
+      imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
+      cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
+      within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
+      vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
+      any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
+      at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
+      and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
+      germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
+      that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+      utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
+      nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
+      inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
+      years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
+      so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
+      hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
+      old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
+      stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
+      were laid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
+      few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
+      well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
+      which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
+      vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
+      on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago (<i>circiter</i>
+      1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was
+      wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had
+      the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five
+      acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered
+      the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up
+      a grove of white pines, covering the field and retaining its figure
+      exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or
+      chestnut tree;" and he adds, "<i>there was not a single pine whose seeds
+      were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been
+      planted on this spot</i>." He supposes, however, that the "seeds" (pine
+      cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought them up
+      "within the limits of vegetation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
+      that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
+      and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
+      forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
+      covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
+      Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
+      the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
+      idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
+      with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
+      time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
+      fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
+      oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
+      many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
+      the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
+      succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
+      hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
+      that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
+      intervals among the larger deciduous trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
+      that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
+      gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
+      once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
+      where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
+      which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
+      of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
+      different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps, <i>vice
+      versa</i>. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a brief
+      summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of the
+      country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less well-informed
+      on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says that in the
+      region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871, "dense growths
+      of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing rapidly;" but he
+      omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to state the previous
+      growths of timber, or whether there were any neighboring growths of poplar
+      along the track of the burnt district from which seed might have been
+      derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here are some of his more important statements:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
+      up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
+      deciduous trees, and <i>vice versa</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
+      oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
+      maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
+      more of the last named than any other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
+      simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
+      that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
+      "Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
+      really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
+      suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
+      surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
+      the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
+      neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
+      forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
+      physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
+      proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
+      be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
+      countries of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
+      New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
+      the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
+      pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
+      without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
+      absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
+      soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
+      ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
+      and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
+      the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
+      often see a hazel coppice; after a time the crat&aelig;gus, and finally
+      the oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
+      aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
+      the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
+      of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
+      timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
+      from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
+      Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
+      wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
+      immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
+      noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
+      very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
+      pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
+      produce nothing but poplars, <i>where none of that species of tree was
+      previously to be found"</i>. But facts of a similar character are too
+      numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
+      authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
+      germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
+      appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
+      them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
+      passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
+      circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
+      plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
+      occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
+      physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
+      a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
+      forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
+      areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
+      yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
+      the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
+      ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
+      after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
+      been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
+      whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
+      tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
+      forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
+      indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
+      specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
+      genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
+      others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
+      theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
+      growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
+      confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
+      scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
+      pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
+      effectually turned on the sneerer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
+      singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
+      appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
+      which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
+      this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
+      disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
+      value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
+      were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
+      earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
+      And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
+      conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
+      were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
+      units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
+      circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
+      all candid and impartial readers will agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
+      theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
+      that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
+      meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
+      position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
+      to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
+      little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
+      will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
+      had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+      heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
+      hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+      years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
+      vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
+      is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
+      only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, <i>but
+      twelve species of plants </i> (not including grasses and sedges)
+      flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath." The
+      attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
+      meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
+      by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
+      in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
+      their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
+      fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
+      soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
+      of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
+      their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
+      changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
+      England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
+      the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
+      open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
+      aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
+      for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
+      seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
+      beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
+      for their more successful growth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
+      centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
+      obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
+      bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
+      obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
+      she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
+      eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
+      guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will."
+      But forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise
+      up in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for
+      ages, or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If
+      the butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
+      dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
+      all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
+      mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
+      to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
+      mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
+      her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
+      command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
+      expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
+      implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
+      seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
+      them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
+      that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
+      language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Nature never lends<br /> The smallest scruple of her excellence,<br />
+        But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines<br /> Herself the glory of a
+        creditor--<br /> <i>Both thanks and use</i>."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
+      of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
+      never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
+      glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
+      seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
+      bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
+      and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
+      legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
+      breast, and her "copy is eterne."
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="04"></a>Chapter IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
+      of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
+      place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
+      unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
+      trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
+      insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
+      plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
+      explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
+      small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
+      which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
+      provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
+      these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
+      in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
+      coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
+      may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
+      plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
+      until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
+      scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
+      to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
+      have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
+      when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
+      vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
+      conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
+      fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we have
+      said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific path.
+      Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on vegetable
+      physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our cereal crops
+      have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the "ashy dryness"
+      of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in which to preserve
+      them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all their machinery
+      for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are the catacombs to
+      be despised, as compared with any out-door means of storage yet suggested
+      by the wit of man. The only means nature has of storage, or rather of
+      preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed back to her bosom--the
+      earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it may be speedily
+      quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself. For "that which
+      thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much more is that dead
+      which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned to nature's
+      bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it quickens or not, it
+      dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from the earth, any more
+      than there is for the occupants of the exhumed mummy-cases of ancient
+      Thebes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
+      nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
+      thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
+      the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
+      belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
+      former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
+      to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
+      least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
+      their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
+      these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
+      after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
+      fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
+      circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
+      had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
+      merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
+      when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
+      no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
+      exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
+      protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
+      whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
+      chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
+      Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
+      Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
+      remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
+      admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
+      on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
+      he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
+      implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
+      wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
+      "dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
+      says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
+      which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
+      the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
+      or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
+      for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface
+      soil exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became
+      covered with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these
+      facts to show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had
+      lain dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
+      erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
+      may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
+      than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
+      dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
+      this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
+      erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
+      household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
+      they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they <i>do</i>
+      follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
+      "Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
+      indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
+      extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
+      after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
+      Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
+      together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
+      at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
+      lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
+      connected with the case was, that <i>the raspberry seeds were recovered
+      from the stomach</i> (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural
+      Society, where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
+      circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
+      provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
+      the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
+      conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
+      would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
+      comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
+      years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
+      raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
+      Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
+      kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
+      were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
+      one." This statement must be received <i>cum grano</i>. The Romans never
+      used coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After
+      a battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
+      was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
+      taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
+      might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
+      soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
+      very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
+      particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
+      the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
+      posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
+      for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
+      that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
+      recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
+      the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
+      well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
+      in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
+      about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
+      record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
+      stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
+      seeds, as well as the <i>obolus</i> in the mouth of the dead soldier,
+      should be found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If
+      they had withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred
+      years, in the surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not
+      to have obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible
+      for belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
+      mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
+      England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
+      of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
+      not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
+      case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
+      distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
+      discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
+      tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
+      soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
+      "Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
+      there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
+      buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
+      other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
+      wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
+      wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
+      trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
+      or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
+      bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
+      of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
+      seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
+      of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
+      alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+      States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
+      fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
+      circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
+      the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is <i>Erechthites
+      hieracifolia</i>, and it is well known to the botanists of New England.
+      Its seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and
+      it is not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by
+      birds, and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
+      survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
+      burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
+      any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
+      heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
+      of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
+      no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
+      their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
+      seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
+      those <i>grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
+      southern hemisphere</i>, not within thousands of miles from the clearing
+      in which they so promptly make their appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
+      deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
+      heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
+      growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
+      the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
+      two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
+      from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
+      to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
+      only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
+      a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
+      must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
+      its place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
+      nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of the
+      burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil where a
+      coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but from "vital
+      units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those taking advantage
+      of environing conditions, just as <i>Bacteria</i> or <i>Torultz</i> spring
+      from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots of stramonium, in
+      a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring directly from the
+      surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living organism must have
+      perished in the heat, and not at any considerable depth below it. Their
+      first appearance is on the immediate surface of the burnt ground, the same
+      as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when there were no seeds to be
+      distributed, except such as must have come from the southern hemisphere,
+      or been casually picked up by birds, and taken their slim chances of
+      survival after passing through the natural "gristmills" of the birds. And
+      even this supposition, would only account for the appearance of a single
+      stramonium plant or two, not for a thick bed of it covering the entire
+      ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in this and other cases, is
+      wholly out of the question; as much so as when white clover makes its
+      appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds of miles away from where
+      there has been a single sprig of clover growing in a thousand years. Every
+      closely observant person, living for any length of time on our western
+      prairies, is familiar with the fact that when the rank and hardier
+      grasses, usually growing thereon, are effectually fed down by stock, and
+      especially by sheep, the prairie grasses disappear, and the ground at once
+      comes in with white clover, and the other nutritious gramma or grasses of
+      our common pasture lands. No seed has been sown in these localities, and
+      none could have been found had every square inch of the surface soil been
+      examined by the most powerful microscope. The white clover and these
+      nutritious grasses make their appearance on these prairies, just as the
+      first sprig of vegetation did on the earth, not from seed, but from pre&euml;xisting
+      vital units or primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and
+      awaiting the necessary conditions for their development and growth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
+      explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
+      to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
+      no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
+      generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
+      seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
+      impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
+      seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
+      thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
+      eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
+      gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
+      the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
+      gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
+      utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
+      corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
+      involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
+      power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
+      seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
+      natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
+      macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
+      gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
+      pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
+      gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
+      outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
+      passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
+      pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
+      appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
+      observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
+      slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
+      the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
+      they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
+      hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
+      the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
+      small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
+      and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
+      some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
+      otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
+      even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
+      bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
+      length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
+      have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
+      character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
+      mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
+      comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
+      have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
+      crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
+      crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
+      fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
+      bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
+      Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
+      chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
+      than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
+      digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
+      "natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
+      "the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
+      loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
+      of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
+      relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
+      without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
+      transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
+      number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
+      of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
+      as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
+      other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
+      have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
+      mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
+      dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
+      this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
+      agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
+      well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
+      given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
+      or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
+      seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
+      late civil war, a little leguminous plant (<i>Lespedeza striata</i>)
+      sprang up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known
+      how it came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some
+      parts of the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as
+      a forage plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of
+      this plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon,
+      or the phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain
+      localities in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very
+      general appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was
+      not particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from
+      one southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant,
+      they naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation,
+      especially in those sections where other forage plants and nutritious
+      gramma were not abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance
+      just the same had the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for
+      aggressive legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
+      suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
+      as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
+      been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
+      southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
+      prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
+      to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
+      and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
+      South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
+      it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
+      thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
+      war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
+      vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
+      in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
+      South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
+      Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
+      states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
+      winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
+      quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
+      wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
+      plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
+      favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
+      organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
+      their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
+      on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
+      examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
+      the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
+      life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
+      have named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
+      "conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
+      soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates," "<i>molecules
+      organiques</i>," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
+      life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
+      theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
+      developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
+      dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
+      conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
+      of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
+      only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
+      "molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
+      from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
+      two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
+      with matter--<i>molar</i> motion, or that relating to matter moving in
+      mass, and <i>molecular</i> motion, or that relating to the movements of
+      matter in its unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
+      collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
+      mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
+      accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
+      other words, it is simply a <i>process</i> or <i>mode</i> of action, and
+      stands in about the same relation to matter as <i>growth</i> does to a
+      living plant or tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either
+      objectively or subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To
+      allege its indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate
+      an additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
+      "force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but it
+      is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as it
+      stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
+      motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in both
+      its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor less
+      than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises having, at
+      best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of moving matter. It
+      would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that matter is the only
+      actual existence, than to predicate of matter a co-existent and wholly
+      inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely physical hypothesis of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
+      local fern (<i>Schizoea pusilla</i>) growing in the pine barrens of New
+      Jersey, affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible
+      genesis of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South.
+      It was at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all
+      our ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
+      ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
+      Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
+      south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
+      north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
+      appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
+      thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
+      the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
+      half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
+      will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
+      of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
+      known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
+      not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
+      hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
+      vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
+      high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
+      another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
+      respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
+      the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
+      mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
+      governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
+      manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
+      globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
+      appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for <i>Bacteria</i>
+      in the blood, <i>Torul&aelig;</i> in the tissues, plastide particles,
+      morphological cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the
+      smallest conceivable "unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the
+      lordliest and most defiant forest oak that ever bared its arms to the
+      storms and tempests of centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk
+      its head with an air of affected incredulity, and superciliously turn
+      aside from this hypothesis, because it does not shock our veneration for
+      the Sacred Scriptures, but let its special advocates advance some more
+      consistent and rational life-theory than that of "molecular machinery
+      worked by molecular force," or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in
+      confessing that they are unable to draw the first line between "living
+      matter" and "dead matter," as they absurdly use these terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
+      question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
+      seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
+      theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
+      east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
+      respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
+      this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
+      the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
+      changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
+      theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
+      directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
+      plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
+      "war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
+      relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
+      and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
+      causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
+      mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
+      habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
+      reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
+      vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
+      common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
+      must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
+      compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
+      conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
+      shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
+      vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
+      been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
+      climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
+      localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
+      growth of local vegetations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
+      seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
+      regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
+      these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
+      vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
+      units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
+      determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
+      resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
+      seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
+      as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
+      given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
+      not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
+      chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
+      likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
+      any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
+      of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
+      soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
+      judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
+      failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
+      experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
+      subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
+      less useful to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
+      As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
+      nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
+      out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
+      of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
+      no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
+      life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
+      inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
+      fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
+      they <i>might</i> produce life <i>de novo</i>.[<a href="#foot13">13</a>]
+      But the most daring physicist would stand aghast at the bare proposal of
+      such an experiment. Neither his knowledge of chemistry, nor the present
+      uncertain value attaching to "molecular machinery," would justify him, for
+      a moment, in entering upon such a purely tentative and empirical an
+      undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
+      in the appearance and geographical distribution of <i>fungi</i>, as
+      universally obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And
+      although it may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line
+      between certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other
+      primitive manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists
+      agree in assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
+      fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
+      classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
+      as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
+      other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
+      necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
+      essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
+      Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
+      obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
+      form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
+      make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
+      them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
+      about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
+      necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
+      development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
+      burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
+      to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
+      commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
+      part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
+      moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
+      which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
+      found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
+      certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
+      of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
+      their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
+      from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
+      nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
+      from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
+      grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
+      disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
+      and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
+      disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
+      mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
+      develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
+      To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
+      different species of <i>Mucor</i>, for instance--for disgusting offal over
+      decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
+      degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
+      creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
+      testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
+      etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
+      of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
+      spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
+      go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
+      apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
+      depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
+      beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
+      select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
+      the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
+      direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
+      conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
+      environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
+      atmosphere--the "<i>pater omnipotens &AElig;ther</i>" of Virgil,
+      "descending into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying
+      showers, and great himself, mingling with her great body" for the
+      development of all things of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with
+      death-pursuing fungi that myriads of their spores might dance without
+      jostling on the point of a cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful
+      than the conceptions of the poet, in personifying the atmosphere as
+      "father &AElig;ther," and the earth as his "joyous spouse." But life, with
+      its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift," has reached its highest
+      conceptions in the mind of the poet, not in the speculations of the
+      scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from many-colored yet invisible
+      threads, is it in the creative mind of a Shakespeare, and how it looms up
+      into "a dome of many-colored glass, staining the white radiance of
+      eternity," under the magic touch of a Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed
+      down to a contemptible piece of "molecular machinery" by the
+      scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its manifestations that it is
+      ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe of all-potential matter and
+      motion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
+      spores of the large puff-ball (<i>Lycoperdon giganteum</i>), as well as
+      those of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose
+      methods of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced
+      artificially. But the process by which their production is thus effected,
+      is more properly a natural than an artificial one. In speaking of
+      truffle-grounds, he says (quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation
+      of beech, or beech and fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury
+      Plain, after the lapse of a few years truffles are produced, and that the
+      plantations continue productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years,
+      after which they cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these
+      cases, but the conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded
+      by the branches of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became
+      favorable for the development of truffle "germs," and they made their
+      appearance just as mushrooms do in caves and other places, where
+      artificial beds are made and chemically balanced for their development and
+      growth. And the reason why they disappeared, after a period of ten or
+      fifteen years, was simply because the proper nutriment of the soil was
+      exhausted, and not in consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the
+      growing trees. One uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of
+      this much-coveted fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions
+      obtain, they <i>appear</i>, and wherever these conditions fail, they <i>disappear</i>,
+      notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
+      soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
+      truffle (<i>Tuber &aelig;stivum</i>) appears under beech trees, another
+      form (<i>Tuber macrosporum</i>) under oak trees, and still a third form (<i>Tuber
+      brumale</i>) under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change
+      in soil conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among
+      oaks, produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
+      amounting to a specific difference in variety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
+      one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
+      horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
+      cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
+      over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
+      time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
+      ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
+      governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
+      whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
+      In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
+      come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
+      its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
+      the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
+      as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
+      Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
+      in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
+      seen by the required telescope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
+      says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
+      dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
+      plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
+      early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
+      summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
+      the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
+      to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
+      of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
+      were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
+      era. These primordial germs, or the <i>ZRA</i> of the Bible genesis, must
+      have preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
+      spore-bearing cryptogam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
+      great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
+      at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
+      oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
+      conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
+      oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
+      All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
+      connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
+      the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
+      all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
+      development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
+      fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
+      connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
+      case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
+      remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
+      micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
+      parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
+      from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
+      parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
+      occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
+      than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
+      springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
+      spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
+      endowed from the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
+      seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
+      could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
+      produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
+      distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
+      stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the <i>first</i>
+      fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
+      divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
+      mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
+      we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
+      comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
+      depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
+      of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
+      condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, <i>Nature</i>, as we
+      half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
+      solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
+      ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
+      radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
+      all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
+      baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
+      idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
+      choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
+      field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
+      her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
+      breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
+      proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
+      life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
+      soul-endowed man.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="05"></a>Chapter V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S.
+      etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of
+      Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856,
+      on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding
+      Food," are the following:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its
+      absolute creation, of which we know nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. "But we assume each species to have been <i>created but once in time
+      and in place</i>, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own
+      law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws
+      external to it.[<a href="#foot14">14</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate,
+      since <i>any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but
+      always fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc</i>.,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates
+      distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the
+      heating rays."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average
+      rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in
+      the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the
+      hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several
+      localities in which the different species of vegetation make their
+      appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific
+      creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount
+      value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and
+      restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from
+      the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs.
+      "Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or
+      restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to doubt
+      that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now, in
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created
+      at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds,
+      is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or
+      scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an
+      experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first
+      bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste
+      over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants
+      peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance,
+      not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have
+      nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because
+      a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from
+      the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we
+      have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man,
+      artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of
+      plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did
+      millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of
+      these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or
+      circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of
+      progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified
+      offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original
+      ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical
+      faith, but never of experimental proof. "<i>Entia non sunt multiplicanda
+      pr&aelig;ter necessitatem</i>" is an old and well-approved maxim,
+      applicable alike to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the
+      innumerable crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is
+      produced without the necessary conditions on which its production depends.
+      "Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest
+      meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course
+      of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and
+      animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements.
+      As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of
+      development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without
+      which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological
+      sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and
+      inevitably produced.[<a href="#foot15">15</a>] And this law is just as
+      dependent on necessary vital conditions as vital manifestations are
+      dependent on a physiological law. There must always be this reciprocal
+      dependence and relationship between conditioning causes and effects.
+      Whenever and wherever the necessary vital conditions exist, the
+      physiological law takes effect, and the requisite vital manifestation is
+      witnessed. And this is no doubt as true of animal as of vegetable life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of
+      which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora.
+      Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">  1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from  0&deg; to 15&deg;.
+  2. " Tropical       "      "         " 15&deg; "  23&deg;.
+  3. " Sub-tropical   "      "         " 23&deg; "  34&deg;.
+  4. " Warm Temperate "      "         " 34&deg; "  45&deg;.
+  5. " Cold           "      "         " 45&deg; "  58&deg;.
+  6. " Sub-arctic     "      "         " 58&deg; "  66&deg;.
+  7. " Arctic         "      "         " 66&deg; "  72&deg;.
+  8. " Polar          "      "         " 72&deg; "  82&deg;.</pre>
+    <p>
+      These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with
+      reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like
+      division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems,
+      extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our
+      equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at
+      their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they
+      respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the
+      next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we
+      ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak
+      of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the
+      elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm
+      temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all
+      latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant
+      life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted
+      for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances,
+      modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the
+      highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight
+      exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that
+      the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should
+      hereafter be extended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation
+      quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical
+      mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate
+      zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer
+      classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are
+      marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey
+      gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant
+      zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of
+      plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind
+      can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these
+      statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the
+      different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of
+      vegetation peculiar to each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance
+      in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein,
+      and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could
+      only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other
+      conditions of that extensive zone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are
+      characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while
+      retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less
+      rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are
+      peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and
+      most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do
+      not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in
+      both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain
+      systems within the equatorial regions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and
+      general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc.,
+      exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a
+      greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery
+      and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels,
+      and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these
+      zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of
+      the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the
+      other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and
+      plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the
+      corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of
+      deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths,
+      cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked
+      characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent
+      grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more
+      extensively into varieties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm
+      temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency
+      is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are
+      more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also
+      abundant in grasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social
+      conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe
+      and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is
+      sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering
+      herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation
+      generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be
+      entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most
+      extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire
+      vegetation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting
+      plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the
+      elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may
+      appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested
+      on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before
+      answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions <i>have</i>
+      been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the
+      distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on
+      climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and
+      isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one
+      important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that
+      of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but
+      once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of
+      its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences
+      of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original
+      plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and
+      that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts
+      of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones
+      where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they
+      attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than
+      satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as
+      reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray,
+      in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work
+      Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he
+      was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not
+      take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication,
+      the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the
+      individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his
+      associate's observations, in considering the very point here under
+      consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his
+      idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in
+      individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in
+      discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view
+      is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with
+      the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of
+      accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or
+      animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their
+      appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and
+      under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions
+      favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these
+      conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its
+      appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but
+      simply the presence of "conditions"--the <i>pro</i>vision of man
+      harmonizing with the <i>pre</i>vision of nature. In the same way the
+      "Japan clover" made its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over
+      the southern states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of
+      plants, but the presence of natural conditions.[<a href="#foot16">16</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be
+      arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general
+      facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly
+      to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and
+      not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast
+      intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others
+      would require us to believe. Take the case of the <i>Schizoea pusilla</i>
+      of the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing
+      in similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their
+      antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this
+      plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long
+      time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that
+      it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to
+      New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these
+      "specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would
+      have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both
+      localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored;
+      and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the
+      fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formul&aelig;,
+      must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite
+      child of nature" that she condescended to create it <i>twice</i> "in time
+      and place," instead of only <i>once</i>. It is a poor rule, they may say,
+      that has no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief
+      in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more
+      rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high
+      authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine
+      currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have
+      played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even
+      across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the
+      appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of
+      miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than
+      the presence of <i>Bacteria</i> or <i>Torul&aelig;</i>[<a href="#foot17">17</a>]
+      in different organic infusions? If the vital units of these <i>infusori&aelig;</i>,
+      are present in experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually
+      admits, why may not the vital germs or units of this <i>Schizoea pusilla</i>
+      have made their appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand
+      and New Jersey, at the same or different periods of time? If Professor
+      Gray regards the microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical
+      forms in inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of
+      nature, then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove
+      that these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which
+      she has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the
+      question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of
+      argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly
+      operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation
+      not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and
+      hence not supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are
+      led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the
+      sub-arctic zone, and <i>vice-versa,</i> and even beyond the equator to the
+      sub-antarctic zone, and still <i>vice versa</i>. Before proceeding to
+      consider the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called
+      glacial periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or
+      considering the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state
+      their position in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and
+      concisely as we know how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the
+      generally accepted one of the evolutionists, as well as most of the
+      present scientific world. As the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet
+      theory of evolution depended on the satisfactory solution of this vexed
+      problem, it became necessary for him to give his best and entire mental
+      energies to the gigantic task which was, by universal consent, assigned
+      him. The reader shall see how admirably the thermal equator is crossed by
+      Mr. Darwin, with his vast swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and
+      other plants, forest trees, anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild
+      animals, such as would gladden the heart of the "great American showman"
+      beyond the most extravagant comparison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve,
+      was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and
+      cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the
+      corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was
+      any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of
+      how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will
+      give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be
+      charged with misrepresentation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and
+      more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions;
+      and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of
+      the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the
+      equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot
+      lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and
+      sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this
+      period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres
+      gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living
+      on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former
+      homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms
+      returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms
+      would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if
+      sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms
+      on the mountains of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its
+      turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere
+      rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the
+      equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the
+      mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These
+      latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes,
+      leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with
+      them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their
+      mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the
+      same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of
+      the intermediate tropical regions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for
+      plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+      south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us
+      in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure,
+      even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the strength
+      of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr. Darwin must
+      rest:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial
+      epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however
+      few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the
+      maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the
+      sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a
+      constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface,
+      being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion
+      or perihelion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the
+      earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any
+      glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not
+      altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time,
+      and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends
+      continuously and permanently much farther north than 80&deg; or 81&deg;.
+      Mt. Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only
+      a few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was
+      traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some
+      ten or twelve degrees further north. [<a href="#foot18">18</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75&deg;,
+      what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the
+      north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope,
+      below 60&deg;, a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The
+      utmost limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time,"
+      conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to
+      55&deg;, or about the northern boundary of England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes
+      of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further
+      south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the
+      sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking
+      of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an
+      ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that
+      the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to
+      the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a
+      moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during
+      the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this
+      continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude.
+      Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only
+      push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm
+      temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the
+      Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of
+      Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less,
+      when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the
+      isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been
+      the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape
+      the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have
+      flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the
+      Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded
+      through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation,
+      that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our
+      northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern
+      ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll
+      has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms
+      down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme
+      northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have
+      managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent
+      habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent?
+      Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it
+      ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible
+      of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only
+      to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these
+      forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern
+      hemisphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more
+      before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that
+      distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly
+      in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been
+      constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must
+      accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period
+      indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them.
+      Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the
+      line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more
+      years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican
+      states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled
+      Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central
+      American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a
+      point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the
+      northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the
+      universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's
+      calculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To have accomplished this grand glaciatorial feat the North Pole must have
+      donned some twenty times the amount of ice now about both poles of the
+      earth, and so changed the earth's centre of gravity as to have inundated
+      every foot of land on its habitable surface. But if this terrible
+      catastrophy had been avoided, and some of our extreme northern forms had
+      forced their way through the Isthmus into the lowlands of Columbia, they
+      must have done so at their greatest possible peril, even if they had
+      reached the base of Old Mt. Tolima in advance of the thermal equator, now
+      fleeing in dismay before the southern Ice-monarch, with all his
+      isochimenal hosts in mad pursuit of their invaders. And if these
+      adventurous northern forms had succeeded in ascending Mt. Tolima, they
+      could never have got down again, with the assistance of forty glaciations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we can imagine Mr. Darwin promptly snatching his pen to show the
+      stupidity of these northern forms in not climbing Popocatepetl or some
+      other lofty mountain in Central America or Mexico, on their retreat before
+      the still advancing thermal equator. But how this would have helped them
+      to cross the geographical equator, we fail to see. When Mr. Darwin, and
+      the eminent corps of geologists and physicists accepting his solution of
+      this "vexed question," can make a "warm term" south <i>succeed</i> a "cold
+      term" north, we shall have no difficulty in solving the problem ourself.
+      But, unfortunately, the two terms--the cold one north and the warm one
+      south--are simultaneous in occurrence, and the same causes which forced
+      these northern invaders into the tropics, when they followed <i>after</i>
+      the thermal equator, would have driven them ignominously back again <i>before</i>
+      it. The climbing of mountains would only have prolonged their disaster.
+      For after the glaciation north comes the glaciation south, and unless our
+      cold temperate zone were pushed down beyond the geographical equator, none
+      of its living forms could ever have reached the corresponding zone in the
+      southern hemisphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as this "migration theory" is one of paramount importance to modern
+      science, and especially to "Darwinism," [<a href="#foot19">19</a>]
+      distinctively so called, let us, at the risk of repetition and
+      tediousness, propose a scientific expedition for the better solution of
+      this problem. To do this, we propose to cut loose from our stupid
+      predecessors, the plants and animals, and invite Mr. Darwin and some of
+      his more distinguished European contemporaries, not omitting Professors
+      Gray, Winchell, Yeomans, and some few other American admirers of his, to
+      accompany us on a fresh expedition from the warm and cold temperate zones
+      north to the corresponding zones south, <i>purely in the interest of
+      science</i>. To make it certain that the time fixed upon for this
+      "expedition" to start, will not escape their attention, we will state what
+      many of them already well know, that the present eccentricity of the
+      earth's orbit is very low, being only 0.0168, and that, in the year of our
+      Lord 851,800, it will reach its next superior limit, with a few
+      intervening oscillations of such minimum value as to render it hardly
+      worth our while to start before that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall be obliged, of course to invite our distinguished European party
+      to join us on this side of the Atlantic, as their own narrow and
+      contracted continent furnishes no proper field for determining the problem
+      in question. We shall insist upon one condition only: "<i>That they shall
+      never leave the warm temperate zone in which we shall set out on our
+      expedition, except to pass halfway into an adjoining zone as is the habit,
+      at times, with plants and animals</i>." This condition will have to be
+      rigidly observed, otherwise our expedition would be of no scientific value
+      to future generations. As we shall have plenty of time to provide the
+      necessary outfit, we will appoint Mr. Darwin purveyor-general of the
+      party, and hold him responsible for any misadventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will arrange for the expedition to start in the early autumn of the
+      year of our Lord 831,800, or about twenty thousand years before the earth
+      shall reach its next superior limit of eccentricity,--all of us eager, of
+      course, to brave the climatic vicissitudes of the journey, and to solve
+      the "great problem of the ages," which is, to determine how the gigantic
+      elephantoids of the Eocene period managed to cross the thermal equator,
+      and pass into the present arctic regions of our globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As "the king never dies," so the old southern Ice-monarch will be
+      succeeded by the young northern one, at about the period named. We shall
+      then have a decided advantage over our predecessors, the plants and
+      animals, in their journey southward, since we shall know the exact route
+      they took, and need only follow it. Presumably they had no such
+      information, nor had they either chart or compass to guide them,--a
+      circumstance which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently taken into account in
+      predicating intelligence of his favorite pedestrians. Besides, these
+      vegetal and animal forms had one difficulty to encounter which we shall
+      not experience. With all the northern forms driven down into the Central
+      American states, they must have been sadly crowded for room, especially
+      near the Isthmus. The social conifers must have monopolized all the more
+      favored sites on the mountain sides and tops, while the humbler denizens
+      of the forest must have contented themselves with still more limited
+      quarters. The more impatient animals, for lack of necessary forage, must
+      have crowded through the Isthmus only to be driven back by the tropical
+      heats to their proper isotherms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But our warm temperate zone is now moving southward, and our scientific
+      expedition is moving with it. The northern Ice-monarch has resumed
+      absolute sway, and our aphelion distance from the sun has increased some
+      tens millions of miles. We have, in the mean time, moved down to the line
+      of the Gulf states, and are deploying to the right in order to make a
+      triumphant entry into Mexico. Mr. Darwin is daily consulting the
+      isochimenals, and is confident that our northern ice-cap will equal Mr.
+      Croll's highest expectations. The news finally reaches us that the Gulf
+      stream has turned its course southward, and is now pouring its immense
+      treasures of heat into the South Atlantic, if not turning the African
+      "horn" and washing the far-off Australian coast. This fact greatly
+      increases the enthusiasm of our European party, and they hasten forward
+      into the sub-tropical zone, almost "violating conditions" in their haste
+      to enter the tropics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, we crowd the narrow passages of the Isthmus, and the glory of a
+      warm temperate climate bursts upon our view in the Columbian states, of
+      South America. <i>The expedition promises to be an entire success</i>. At
+      least, Mr. Darwin thinks so, and he is now the Sir Oracle of our party. We
+      deliberately enter the lowlands of Columbia, and make ready to ascend the
+      sub-tropical mountains--those formerly equatorial--where the "great
+      scientific problem of the ages" is to be demonstrated. But we are
+      measuring time by almost <i>Sirius</i> distances, and vast geologic
+      periods sweep by without apparent record. The northern ice-cap has been a
+      prodigious one, crowding us nearly down to the geographical equator, with
+      the advantage we have of appropriating some five and half degrees of the
+      sub-tropical zone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the year Anno Domini 851,800 finally rolls round, and the maximum of
+      the earth's ice-cap is reached. Old Mt. Tolima looms up in the distance,
+      and we soon ascertain that its height is sufficient for all scientific
+      purposes. Its summit displays a glittering ice-cap, and we are certain to
+      find the proper isotherm by climbing its umbrageous sides. We accordingly
+      make haste to reach its base, and get there not a minute too soon; for the
+      young southern Ice-monarch has stolen a march on the thermal equator, and
+      is driving it irresistibly back to its old quarters. His march northward
+      is a continuous triumph and ovation up to 55&deg;, and the heart of
+      Patagonia is made glad by his near approach. True, the white gates of
+      commerce are closed about the Horn; but that is no concern of these wild
+      Patagonians. The aggressive Britton is driven out of New Zealand, and that
+      is another source of joy to the savage breast. Tasmania would extend a
+      gladder welcome than all to the Ice-crowned monarch, but alas, not a drop
+      of Tasmanian blood runs in human veins! Cape Good Hope has now a
+      sub-arctic climate, and the heart of the wild Kaffir and Zulu rejoices
+      that the sceptre of "perfidious Albion" is broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thermal equator at length reaches the base of Mt. Tolima, and hastens
+      northward to the Isthmus, and thence to Hondurus and New Guatemala, where,
+      by sheer force of exhaustion, it comes to a halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as the equatorial zone extends fifteen degrees both ways from the
+      thermal equator, its southern limit now rests on the geographical equator,
+      and accordingly encircles the base of our "mount of refuge." We are now up
+      this mountain some sixteen thousand feet above the equatorial lowlands,
+      with the sub-tropical, tropical, and equatorial zones between us and the
+      possibility of our further migration southward, without violating the
+      express conditions imposed at the outset of our expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact soon stares us in the face that we have been no more successful,
+      in our efforts to cross the thermal equator and pass into high southern
+      latitudes, than the stupid plants and animals before us; and Mr Darwin's
+      faith in high mountains springing from equatorial lowlands, disappears in
+      jest and derision as we all good-humoredly agree "to break conditions,"
+      and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and
+      New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve
+      itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness,
+      hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great
+      commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of
+      exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The
+      Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by
+      us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the <i>Herald</i>, of
+      the date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific
+      expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "<i>The Great Wild-Goose
+      Chase after the Thermal Equator</i>"--presenting one of the most humorous
+      bits of sensational pleasantry ever given to the American public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But an apology is due the staider reader for the seeming levity of this
+      narrative adventure. The exposition of Mr. Darwin, though widely accepted
+      on both sides of the Atlantic by the scientific world, has seemed to us
+      too trivial for serious reply. If we have leaped over vast periods of
+      time, it makes no difference with the argument. So long as the thermal
+      equator, or more properly the equatorial zone, or any part of it, lies
+      between the warm or cold temperate forms, whether plants or animals, and
+      their point of destination in the southern hemisphere, they can never
+      migrate thither, any more than the right whale of the arctic seas can swim
+      the equatorial oceans. Nothing is gained by going out of the way to climb
+      mountains, except to hopelessly retard the return of both plants and
+      animals to their native zones. If we have not demonstrated this fact to
+      the reader's fullest comprehension, it will be useless for him ever to
+      write a Q.E.D. at the end of any proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that some eminent astronomers and physicists hesitate to accept
+      the theory that these glacial epochs are due to the eccentricity of the
+      earth's orbit. But the argument favoring it is well fortified and ably
+      advanced, and if we add to the astronomical considerations involved, the
+      physical proofs of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, caused by
+      the excessive accumulation of ice about either pole, and the probable
+      shifting of the Gulf stream to a southerly direction during the glacial
+      period north, it is difficult to resist the conviction that the real cause
+      of glaciation has been suggested in this theory. With all the ice now
+      accumulated about the south pole transferred to the north pole, it would
+      make an ice-cap of over thirty miles in thickness at the pole, and one
+      sloping in all directions southward to about 60&deg;. This accumulation,
+      it is claimed, would so change the earth's centre of gravity as to cause
+      all the equatorial warm waters to flow southward instead of northward, as
+      they now do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This would certainly seem to be a most wonderful provision of nature, as
+      well as one strongly calculated to impress the human mind with the belief
+      that an Infinite <i>Pre</i>vision lies behind all possible <i>pro</i>vision,
+      whether witnessed in the heavens or in the earth, in astronomical or
+      physical phenomena. Everywhere we see infinite perfection, combined with
+      infinite beneficence, in the adaptation of means to ends. Nothing runs to
+      waste--all things are conserved for use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in all the outspoken grandeur of the universe, there is nothing so
+      grand, in exhibition at least, as the simple faith of a child, that "He
+      who watereth the hills from his chambers," and "causeth the day-spring to
+      know his place," will watch over the trustful little sleeper during the
+      darkness and silence of the night.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="06"></a>Chapter VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The Distribution and Premanence of Species.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the
+      advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while
+      remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones,
+      says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United
+      States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--<i>i.e.</i> Eastern
+      North America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference
+      apart, we find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our
+      distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe,
+      thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general
+      physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and
+      other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all
+      the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great
+      similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the
+      astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity,
+      had it been found to exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
+      plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
+      zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
+      different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
+      and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
+      therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
+      known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
+      all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
+      Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
+      alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
+      States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
+      Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
+      pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
+      correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
+      same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
+      of all the mountain systems of the globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
+      geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
+      objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
+      friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
+      climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
+      that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
+      ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
+      "coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
+      insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
+      bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
+      the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
+      the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
+      mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
+      as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
+      Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
+      attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
+      hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
+      seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon
+      these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There
+      is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the
+      rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the
+      lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and
+      far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away
+      from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be
+      chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if
+      all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have
+      been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross
+      the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions
+      of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and
+      explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of
+      plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the
+      explanation wanted. It explains not only <i>why</i> these alpine flora
+      appear where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also
+      explains all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the
+      foregoing chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the
+      earth responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine
+      harebell is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it
+      wears. And so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads
+      and sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never
+      grew before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang
+      therein "its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the
+      black alder will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far
+      its current may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the
+      supply of natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate
+      her as "instinct with music and <i>the vital spark</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of
+      nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert
+      that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her
+      grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find
+      out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to
+      accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with
+      our chronic neglect of what nature <i>does</i>, is the great scientific
+      stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that
+      certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from the <i>absence</i>
+      of "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the reverse of
+      this undeniable proposition, and agree that the <i>presence</i> of
+      necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their
+      appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal
+      law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the
+      universe itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical
+      distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British
+      Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As
+      early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in
+      his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in
+      connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of
+      the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution;
+      while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in
+      his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in
+      Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our
+      botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense
+      plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have
+      given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed
+      vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and
+      scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of
+      any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to
+      question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the
+      array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon
+      the audacious questioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any
+      longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or
+      fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never
+      meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well
+      in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without
+      knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many
+      superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and
+      diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough
+      daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice
+      them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the
+      more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the
+      truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional
+      grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out
+      the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole
+      business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a
+      delight instead of a burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown,
+      or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come
+      from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms
+      come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical
+      rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent,
+      for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that
+      all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is
+      dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now
+      only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his
+      "necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all
+      animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial
+      conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine
+      Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in
+      the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may
+      appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds,
+      fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about
+      100&deg; C., and that <i>Bacteria, Torul&aelig;</i>, and other infusorial
+      forms, making their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from
+      morphological cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital
+      organism, but from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere
+      present in the organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth
+      into life whenever the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper
+      incidences of environment occur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring
+      forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as
+      unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to
+      such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary
+      telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north,
+      or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions
+      occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a
+      country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in
+      which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the
+      general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees
+      peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in
+      the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution
+      of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to
+      latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall,
+      soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for
+      the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing,
+      if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data
+      for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the
+      evolutionists have been spinning for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials,
+      more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year.
+      We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only to
+      find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we advance,
+      or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our vast
+      mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas thoroughfared
+      and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits signs of
+      becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in her
+      demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of facts as
+      the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future recognition.
+      She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is likely to
+      become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due to her
+      methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out her
+      hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to
+      return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to
+      adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna
+      and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all
+      indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of
+      time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in
+      character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to
+      require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production and
+      reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn her
+      species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power above
+      her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was brought
+      forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and
+      wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to
+      the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached
+      out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as
+      avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized
+      forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so
+      remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may
+      be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties
+      of the <i>Sequoia</i>, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs,
+      poplars, hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions
+      during the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown
+      on the spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain
+      undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a
+      warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized
+      forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively
+      showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have
+      worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in
+      genetic value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical
+      forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm
+      inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial
+      periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the
+      earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formul&aelig;, we can have no
+      conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period
+      named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest
+      glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there
+      have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can
+      be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening
+      maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It
+      is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible
+      glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who
+      differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any
+      other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his
+      theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an
+      interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and
+      nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the
+      present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have
+      undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it
+      require to work out even <i>one</i> of Mr. Darwin's many evolutional
+      changes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora
+      and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be
+      distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the
+      varieties of the <i>Sequoia</i> family, the oaks, beeches, firs,
+      hazelnuts, etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be
+      difficult to classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they
+      cannot be placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled
+      out of representative types. But why should our speculative botanists
+      insist upon these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative
+      forms" of which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has
+      given us the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be
+      claimed is that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions
+      of years ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not
+      repugnant, alliances, can produce
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        --"Streak'd gillyflowers,<br /> Which some call nature's bastards."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her
+      alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of
+      propagation. If she produced the <i>Sequoia gigantea</i>, or the great
+      redwood tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous
+      period, she has propagated it ever since according to her own loving
+      methods, and it is idle to talk of the <i>Sequoia Langsdorfii</i> as being
+      the original ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of
+      the sequoias. How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz
+      that these trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in
+      individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can
+      never bear the fruit of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of the <i>Quercus</i>
+      or oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of ingenuity to
+      show that the various members of this old and ancestrally-knotty family
+      have all descended from two or three of the hardier varieties. He arrives
+      at this conclusion from a geographical survey of what he would call the
+      "whole field of distribution," and "the probable historical connection
+      between these congeneric species." But science should deal with as few
+      probabilities as possible, especially where experience furnishes no guide
+      to certainty, and only the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never
+      predicate probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some
+      likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or
+      otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we
+      determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so
+      much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in
+      the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be
+      absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a
+      determinate judgment. The <i>Quercus robur</i> may furnish the maximum
+      test to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other
+      variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M. De
+      Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than
+      twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded to
+      be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long as
+      the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one
+      twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to
+      determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished in
+      the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other,
+      M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has
+      governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has
+      only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still
+      speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may
+      show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed
+      to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because
+      they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from
+      the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like
+      engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity
+      of <i>idea</i>, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of
+      the <i>individuorum similium</i> in Jessieu's definition of species. But
+      similarity must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere
+      exists in nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the
+      rarest possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million
+      will be found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees
+      of the same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and
+      branching of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated
+      covering, <i>Et sic de similibus</i> everywhere, and with respect to every
+      thing. Nature is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of
+      similarity and tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the
+      Platonic conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only
+      a supplementary truth to that of <i>de similibus</i>. In the eye of the
+      soul all objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as
+      consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material
+      universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[<a
+      href="#foot20">20</a>] into the smallest possible number of similar or
+      identical forms, may be all well enough to accomplish scientific
+      classification; but the productive power of nature can never be limited by
+      these mental processes of our own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently
+      enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in
+      speaking of the <i>Quercus robur</i> and its probable origin, says that it
+      is "traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks
+      eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant
+      shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest
+      descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the
+      Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats
+      on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after
+      the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The
+      spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia
+      was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring
+      subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of
+      the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which
+      spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when
+      conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no
+      difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical
+      conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the
+      speculative botanist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they
+      "have come into existence coincident both in time and place with pre&euml;xisting
+      closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as individual
+      localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of original
+      progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily
+      determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species
+      preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place,
+      their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by pre&euml;xistence.
+      The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the
+      appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a
+      closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is
+      lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to
+      progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species
+      preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than
+      the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of
+      observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic
+      connection between the different species, or between even the same
+      species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that
+      advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization
+      depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the
+      dispersion of seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not
+      depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of
+      specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the
+      possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of
+      conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually
+      concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection
+      with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual
+      distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of
+      preceding conditions." [<a href="#foot21">21</a>] And he is forced to this
+      conclusion by his virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged
+      means of seed-distribution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and
+      animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what
+      they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can
+      any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis,
+      which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what
+      forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is
+      impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of
+      thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel
+      wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we
+      make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties
+      existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they
+      were brought about by artificial processes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been
+      practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in
+      nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the
+      distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend
+      towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from
+      other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies,
+      resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens
+      and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of
+      species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced
+      by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving
+      tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of
+      man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the
+      category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In
+      view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such
+      as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders,
+      tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard
+      Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea
+      of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the
+      result of man's agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to
+      undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists
+      and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among
+      individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the
+      absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the
+      fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary
+      limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These
+      differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the
+      question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature,
+      rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new
+      races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than
+      certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease.
+      But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to
+      origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the
+      oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the
+      Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that
+      no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three
+      million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million
+      years, except that the <i>Sequoia gigantea</i> may drop out, from the
+      vandalism of man or the next glacial drift.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique &eacute;n Norwege," says "that
+      each species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has
+      its own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric
+      gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture
+      and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the
+      physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary
+      hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the
+      point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without
+      the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There
+      was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth
+      than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first
+      instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense
+      of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees
+      of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography,
+      climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and
+      tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that
+      institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with
+      a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern
+      forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which,
+      though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their
+      leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be
+      distinctly understood, is no alteration <i>produced</i> by climate. Trees
+      are made for and not <i>by</i> climate, and they keep their
+      characteristics throughout their whole range, which with some extends
+      through a great variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we
+      suppose he means by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and
+      sub-arctic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of
+      the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United
+      States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and
+      extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important
+      elements--in fact, the <i>most</i> important--is wanting in the tables
+      before us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of
+      specimens were obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have
+      occurred, although it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He
+      had his materials to work upon, and may have done the best that any one
+      could with them. And yet it is just as important to know at what <i>elevation</i>
+      a particular tree grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes
+      from a sub-arctic or sub-tropical region.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with
+      most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and
+      trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other
+      in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward
+      from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We
+      have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief,
+      if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional
+      grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He
+      wants it distinctly understood that trees are made <i>for</i>, and not <i>by</i>,
+      climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a
+      localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by
+      climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved
+      throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and
+      migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it
+      would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or
+      the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us
+      neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the
+      climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during
+      their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is
+      undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made."
+      They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring
+      them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow
+      now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of
+      the ground made the Lord God <i>to grow</i>" every plant of the field, and
+      every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the
+      want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions,
+      the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and
+      growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest
+      extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the
+      climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees
+      modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true
+      physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearance <i>in</i>
+      climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without material
+      change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor. <i>Why</i>
+      they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we
+      assume a pre&euml;xisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation
+      our subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth
+      to bring them forth, after <i>his</i> spirit (the animating soul of life)
+      had moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of
+      the earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more
+      comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the
+      perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled.
+      Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that
+      it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human
+      soul. Besides, we find <i>it true in fact</i>, since the earth is
+      constantly teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law
+      impressed upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "If this faith fail,<br /> The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,<br /> And
+        earth's base built on stubble."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="07"></a>Chapter VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human
+      reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to
+      determine. It furnishes no objective <i>datum</i> on which to predicate
+      attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as
+      the coordination of the <i>vis vitae</i> in nature, which is an
+      undisguised form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such
+      attributes as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of
+      thought. It admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical
+      proposition. To say of life that it is "a co&ouml;rdination of action,"
+      might be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one;
+      otherwise, crystallization would fall under its category, which is
+      manifestly an illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible
+      explication, analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands
+      absolutely alone and apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital
+      principle, or process of action, which all physiologists agree, for the
+      sake of convenience and uniformity of expression, in designating as a <i>power,
+      property, force</i>, etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin
+      the subtlest and profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have
+      returned but one answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great
+      primal source of all life in the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases,
+      borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "<i>Jupiter est genitor</i>,"
+      "<i>Jupiter est quodcunque vivit</i>," etc., which, although uninspired
+      utterances, strike their roots deeply into the <i>terra incognita</i> of
+      consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a
+      paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman
+      defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted,"
+      he was as conclusively indulging in the <i>argumentum in circulo</i> as if
+      he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be
+      as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of
+      Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement <i>x-y</i> the antithesis of <i>x+y</i>--one
+      of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed
+      in the formula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the
+      argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing
+      enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in
+      logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real
+      definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of
+      reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular
+      phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern
+      materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the
+      "potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated
+      differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the
+      part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a
+      whimsical enough way of putting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full
+      of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But
+      this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once
+      received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it
+      is idle to predicate the <i>vis vitae</i>. For the great bulk of our globe
+      is made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which
+      neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the
+      slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or
+      plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the
+      world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the
+      chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the
+      principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In
+      whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in
+      respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of
+      empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems,
+      than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward
+      survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond
+      this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to
+      which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abb&eacute; Spallanzani
+      in modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few
+      others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the
+      inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its
+      elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing
+      germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller
+      than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond the
+      construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that the
+      germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the earth,
+      or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to bring
+      forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything
+      which exists is referable to the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>--to non-corporeal,
+      yet extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's
+      bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with
+      a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of
+      the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory
+      so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible,
+      ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the
+      entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of
+      elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes
+      with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it
+      is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely numerous--is
+      also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm: everything that is,
+      or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own spontaneous power,
+      through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a germ, the totality of
+      things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of
+      being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism"
+      landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the
+      animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living
+      things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they
+      make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature
+      still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that
+      this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable
+      experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis
+      of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent
+      materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm
+      rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in
+      this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a
+      scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely
+      fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great
+      advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena
+      occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now.
+      It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the
+      panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so
+      deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation
+      in these directions.[<a href="#foot22">22</a>] Neither the lowest
+      primordial cell, nor the least conceivable molecule, has yet been reached
+      by the aid of the microscope, any more than the outermost circle of the
+      heavens has been penetrated by the aid of the telescope. We must stop
+      somewhere, and when we find a scientifically formulated statement which
+      embraces all vital phenomena, and satisfactorily accounts for them all,
+      whether it originally came from Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a
+      matter of comparatively slight moment, so far as the scientific world is
+      concerned. At least, it would seem so to us. But to talk of the <i>de novo</i>
+      origin of "living matter" as the result of the dynamic force of
+      molecules--themselves concessively "dead matter"--is to indulge in quite
+      as fanciful a speculation as the advocates of the panspermic hypothesis
+      have ever ventured to suggest. Professor Bastian is forced to go back of
+      his infusorial forms and fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from
+      which he admits they are "evolved." But why evolved? Does not the
+      principle of vitality lie back of the pellicle, as well as the
+      fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he that the extremest verge of
+      microscopic investigation has been attained, in what he is pleased to
+      designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is a very potential word,
+      and no one may yet know what boundless stores of absurd theory and
+      metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![<a href="#foot23">23</a>] He
+      admits that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can
+      have nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic
+      organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise
+      into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin,
+      that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in
+      and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both
+      animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in,
+      or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution,"
+      for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the
+      developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree,
+      lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or
+      the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this
+      developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of
+      ancestry to be traced anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the
+      Darwinian <i>plexus</i> squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen
+      and Tr&eacute;viranus agree that the infusoria met with have never
+      presented similar characters when they have been encountered in different
+      infusions; nor have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different
+      portions of it have been <i>exposed to the incidence of different
+      conditions</i>. The slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the
+      materials employed, are invariably accompanied by the appearance of
+      different organisms--these being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and
+      unaccompanied by any of the familiar forms." Other writers of equal
+      eminence in this field of investigation have not only observed the same
+      characteristics, but encountered the same difficulties in classification,
+      from the very great diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms.
+      So great is this diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that
+      little certainty or value can be attached to the classifications already
+      made. Even Professor O.F. M&uuml;ller, after he had convinced himself that
+      he had discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a
+      single genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut
+      them all down to mere modifications of one and the same species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of
+      emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of
+      different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The
+      presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically
+      averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of
+      "conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital
+      phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the
+      mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of
+      any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected,
+      it will produce <i>some</i> form of life; not because it contains this or
+      that morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100&deg; C--that
+      to which it is experimentally subjected before microscopic
+      examination,--but because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the
+      required heat-test or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible
+      by heat as by glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the
+      proper conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in
+      either the quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion,
+      is, as these eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the
+      appearance of different forms of life, just as the slightest change in
+      soil-conditions, such as that produced by the presence of one species of
+      tree with another in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the
+      appearance of another and altogether different plant, as well as truffle
+      tuber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to
+      combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we
+      refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its
+      complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme
+      simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in
+      the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is
+      formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements
+      that take place <i>in invisible colloidal molecules</i>--a process which
+      is essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived
+      from lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded
+      definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a
+      hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all
+      materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no
+      such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed.
+      There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resulting
+      <i>from</i>, not <i>in</i>, the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>, or the elementary
+      principle of life in nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in
+      abundance. This materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as
+      a generic one even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed
+      that the "proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of
+      Professor Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. M&uuml;ller, the "bioplast" of
+      Professor Beale, etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in
+      name. They are mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which
+      exhibit the first active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size
+      from the one hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second
+      of an inch in diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks
+      of semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous
+      layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they
+      were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder
+      supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is
+      the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the
+      plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the
+      first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome
+      of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on earth.[<a
+      href="#foot24">24</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter,
+      any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move,
+      pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs
+      with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the
+      microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as
+      essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or
+      megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper
+      response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the
+      marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or
+      classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter,
+      we can never predicate <i>vitality</i> of it, any more than we can
+      predicate <i>intellectuality</i>. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents
+      no greater incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter."
+      These qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature,
+      not to insensate matter. To assert that life results <i>from</i> "certain
+      combinations and rearrangements of matter," and not <i>in</i> them, is
+      utterly to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them
+      together that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an
+      object of perception. Without the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>, or some germinal
+      principle of life, lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of
+      matter," and determining the movements of their constituent molecules,
+      there could be no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a
+      correlate of a force without the actual existence of the force itself. [<a
+      href="#foot25">25</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive
+      structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living
+      organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is
+      endowed with the property or power of producing life <i>de novo</i>, or,
+      as Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living
+      matter" which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but
+      whether they die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and
+      more potentially endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those
+      following their diagnoses to determine. They further claim that the same
+      law of vital manifestation obtains in organic solutions as in the
+      structureless mass they call "protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed
+      with the same potentiality of originating life independently of vital
+      units, or <i>de novo</i>, as they more persistently phrase it. But why
+      speak of <i>unfolding</i> "new-born specks of living matter?" "To unfold"
+      means to open the folds of something--to turn them back, get at the
+      processes of their <i>infoldment</i>. It implies a pre-existing something,
+      inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a germ, what is this
+      pre-existing vital something which their language implies? Is our
+      scientific technology so destitute of definitional accuracy that they
+      cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without committing half that
+      number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born specks of living
+      matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by sheer
+      inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian, should
+      trip in this definitional way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Living matter," <i>born</i> of what? Certainly not of <i>dead</i> matter.
+      Death quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the
+      grave. It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of
+      matter in which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly
+      ceased, if, indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use
+      language with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter,"
+      whatever the phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken
+      nothing. The pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is
+      there any birth from unquickened matter. Animals <i>bear</i> young, trees
+      <i>bear</i> fruit, but force <i>produces</i> results. What then quickens
+      protoplasmic matter? Neither vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are
+      to credit the materialists. They would scorn to postulate such a theory,
+      or accept any such absurd remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is
+      rather "molecular force"--a physical, not a vital unit--that gives us
+      these "new-born specks of living matter." [<a href="#foot26">26</a>] This
+      is what they would all assert at once, in their enthusiasm to enlighten us
+      on a new terminology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the
+      subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic
+      force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in
+      the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived.
+      And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond
+      microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of
+      either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than
+      that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is
+      going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence
+      adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living
+      organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one
+      is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this
+      subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his
+      antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and
+      deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of
+      molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole
+      controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the
+      visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated
+      sky-mist" beyond it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic
+      matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain
+      forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life:
+      But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher,
+      more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether
+      unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital
+      unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These
+      primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the
+      microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains
+      as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative
+      hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist
+      is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any
+      advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and
+      the other the synthetic method.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the materialistic argument covering the <i>de novo</i> origin of
+      living organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they
+      assert, that these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or
+      vital units, than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is,
+      come from pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is
+      overlooking all generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of
+      action. Crystals are inorganic matter which <i>form</i>, do not <i>grow</i>.
+      They are mere symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are
+      produced by some law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of
+      their constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no
+      beginning or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric
+      solids, they remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic,
+      not functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of
+      crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us.
+      Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation,
+      not of mere aggregation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the
+      materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still
+      insist, between the pre&euml;xisting germs of crystals and plants--or the
+      only difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles
+      of matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing
+      diversified forms and structural changes than the more highly favored
+      vital particles, such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the
+      plastide, etc. The one represents mere crystallizable matter, the other
+      the more complex colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of
+      producing a much greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they
+      concede, end here. But the difference is world-wide when we come to
+      processes--the true experimental test in all classification.
+      Crystallizable substances <i>crystallize</i>--that is all. They pass into
+      a fixed and immovable state, and mostly into one as enduring as adamant;
+      while colloidal or albuminoid matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no
+      fixed forms--only those that are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so
+      marked a feature, in respect to all the primordial forms of life, that
+      Professor Bastian gives them the more distinctive name of
+      "ephemeromorphs," in place of <i>infusoria</i>. But all these primordial
+      forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with a solitary crystal.
+      Everywhere the statical unit <i>forms</i>, the dynamical unit <i>grows</i>;
+      the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one solidifies, the other
+      opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the embrace of eternal
+      silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and makes nature resonant
+      with praise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain
+      microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo
+      in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental
+      tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of alg&aelig;. They
+      attribute their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation
+      of filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the
+      latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes
+      constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic
+      tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of
+      molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary
+      conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or
+      appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating
+      either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these
+      materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this
+      connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in
+      which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals,
+      in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living
+      organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular
+      formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would
+      expect to encounter from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that
+      he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms) <i>at
+      will</i>, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably
+      true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as to <i>his</i>
+      (M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field
+      with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to
+      do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to
+      plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, and <i>vice
+      versa</i>, then he might be said to have produced corn <i>at will</i>. And
+      so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce
+      one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by
+      any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life
+      in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that
+      without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as
+      complete in one form as another,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,<br /> As the rapt seraph
+        that adores and burns."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the
+      production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of
+      nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing
+      chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental
+      flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the action
+      of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and if he
+      studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much the
+      laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls
+      "new-born specks of living matter" are produced <i>de novo</i>, that is,
+      independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life
+      implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life
+      with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as
+      plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively
+      shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks.
+      But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal
+      under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by
+      experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one.
+      His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk about
+      <i>de novo</i> production is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were
+      it possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed,
+      seed, underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with
+      just as diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the
+      gigantic conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance
+      again, and some plants might drop out of the local flora; but the <i>Pater
+      omnipotens &AElig;ther</i> of Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his
+      joyous spouse (the earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body,
+      in all the prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[<a
+      href="#foot27">27</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the
+      right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are
+      anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they
+      resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks,
+      they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in
+      saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more
+      satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even
+      Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they
+      thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in
+      countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his
+      accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the
+      experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is
+      a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital
+      unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat.
+      Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of
+      such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is,
+      that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy
+      and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific
+      explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs"
+      primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions,
+      and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But
+      in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip
+      in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it
+      conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural
+      forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or
+      inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system
+      presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms
+      of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular
+      crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will
+      forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine
+      Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change
+      itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from
+      eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living
+      types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless
+      crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In
+      this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline
+      argument of the materialists has its value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of
+      their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting
+      statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions
+      that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living
+      organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions, nor
+      should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the validity
+      of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If they insist
+      upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a crystalline
+      "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they are effectually
+      estopped from denying the presence of vital units in dynamical
+      aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction that the
+      process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one case,
+      eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn round
+      and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and certain,
+      but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms. If vital
+      units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units, statical
+      units, and morphological units, should fall into the same categories of
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists
+      and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in
+      attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by
+      his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases
+      necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "<i>the
+      continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations</i>."
+      This definition, when first formulated, was received by all the
+      materialists of Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely
+      perfect. All the phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a
+      nest of them, fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to
+      show that any other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into
+      this prodigious formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand
+      on it, but only in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all
+      living things, are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number
+      of little boxes, one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of
+      all contains the germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was
+      hardly a legitimate characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of
+      "continuous adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box
+      adjusted to the external relations of another. The definition is really
+      that of a piece of working machinery--any working machinery--and was
+      designed to cover Mr. Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by
+      molecular force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations
+      to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the
+      upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration
+      of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely
+      external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its
+      external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of
+      causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the
+      characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the
+      distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its
+      hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and
+      electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all
+      showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or
+      relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life,"
+      according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an
+      automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to
+      external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor
+      Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these
+      automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment
+      of their internal to their external relations is continuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" encouraged Professor
+      Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: "Life," he
+      says, "is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of
+      growing by selection and interstitial appropriation of new matter (what
+      new matter?) which then assumes similar qualities, of continually varying
+      in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M),
+      and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions
+      of its own substance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this
+      definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best
+      aid him by grammatically analyzing its structure. And,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. "Life is capable of growing." We are glad to know this. As a vitalist
+      it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back
+      seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We
+      let its "unstable collocation" pass for what it is worth, and stick to our
+      grammatical analysis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. "Life grows--is capable of doing something." This assurance positively
+      encourages us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. "It grows by selection and interstitial appropriation." This is still
+      more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we
+      feel, is increasing in potentiality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. "By appropriation it enables <i>new matter to assume similar qualities
+      to old matter</i>." This makes us more confident than ever; we take
+      another step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is
+      getting to be almost a "potentiated potentiality," to adopt the style of
+      materialistic phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. "It causes matter <i>to continually vary in composition.</i>" Bravo! we
+      unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most
+      comforting assurance. Life is assuredly getting the upperhand of Matter
+      (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere "undiscovered correlate of
+      motion"--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with it--throws
+      it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more steps forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. "Life is capable of self-multiplication"--has almost a creative
+      faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of "bravoes," and, stepping
+      boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to "throw up the
+      sponge," take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new definition of
+      "life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his
+      own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that
+      all these attempts to define life as a non-entity only, tend to keep up
+      the demoralizing idea that it is an actual entity. We entirely agree with
+      him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the
+      definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees
+      this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on
+      Ephemeromorphs: "Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of
+      which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively
+      useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and,
+      what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an
+      independent entity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be objected that our grammatical analysis of the professor's
+      definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should
+      cover a "living thing," and not "life" as an abstract, term. Our reply to
+      this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is
+      simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that
+      his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other,
+      either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition
+      entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able
+      pathological anatomist of the London University college is a "living
+      thing." He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is
+      capable of growing, by "selection and interstitial appropriation," in
+      reputation at least, if not in the direction of "an independent entity."
+      His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the
+      ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal
+      manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional
+      labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea
+      that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a
+      London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or
+      the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not
+      in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His
+      assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the
+      phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism
+      cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any
+      more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of
+      gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing
+      organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the
+      universe (call it the will of God, gravitation or what you may) must have
+      existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either
+      advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over
+      effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the
+      phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To
+      say that there can be no <i>manifestation</i> of life without an organism
+      is true; but to assume that the vital principle which organizes is
+      dependent on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be
+      the lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that
+      cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental
+      processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying
+      the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Plato lived." He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant
+      of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have
+      looked upon as "the temple of God," and all the world would have
+      recognized as a god-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek
+      chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
+      All agreed in this. And yet it was not the <i>habitat</i> but the <i>habitant</i>
+      that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest
+      enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was
+      the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling <i>Archeus</i>,
+      presiding over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic
+      powers therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even
+      Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this,
+      with all that his new terms "ontogeny" and "phylogeny" may imply. When
+      potential life passed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it
+      was not the pabulum that assimilated the man, but the man the pabulum. If
+      this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case of
+      plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the phenomenal
+      manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a cabbage-stalk. In other
+      words, if the animating principle of life--or, as the Bible has it, the
+      "animating soul of life"--is not what manifests itself in material
+      embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor Haeckel mean by his new
+      term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines of descent in all organic
+      beings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether <i>mal pos&eacute;</i>.
+      Pabulum is nothing without a pre&euml;xisting "something" to dispose of
+      it. It is not so much as a jelly-mass breakfast for one of Professor
+      Haeckel's "protamoeb&aelig;;" for if it were served up in advance, there
+      would be none of his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it,
+      much less any of his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in
+      her "hand-book of cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch
+      your hare. But our ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the
+      hare and the curry, in serving up his pabulum to the "protamoeb&aelig;."
+      The improvident pabulum "evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like,
+      is eviscerated by them, as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life,
+      therefore, begins in the tragedy of Mount Cith&aelig;ron, it is to be
+      hoped it will end in the delights of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="08"></a>Chapter VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
+      seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
+      not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
+      their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
+      super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
+      that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
+      heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100&deg;
+      C--212&deg; F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially
+      when the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of
+      fifteen or twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the
+      light of all the experiments which have been made in this direction, there
+      is some doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many,
+      if not most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100&deg; C, there
+      is little or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more
+      tenacious of life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is
+      equally unquestionable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
+      capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
+      of 120&deg; to 125&deg; C. (248-257&deg; F), while the same spores
+      entirely lose their germinating power after an exposure for half an hour
+      or more to a slightly higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on
+      "The Action of Heat on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the
+      proceedings of the Royal Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are
+      capable of resisting the action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300&deg;
+      F, although exposed therein for half an hour or more. But none of these
+      crucial tests, however diverse in experimental results, really touch the
+      all-important question in controversy. They all relate either to living
+      organisms, or to the seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living
+      indestructible "germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
+      materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
+      they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
+      no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
+      by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
+      between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
+      conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
+      other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
+      obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
+      Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
+      protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
+      in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
+      Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
+      any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
+      homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
+      give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
+      soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
+      any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
+      character of the infusoria appearing therein.[<a href="#foot28">28</a>]
+      The cells are living organisms springing from vital units, and can no more
+      manifest themselves independently of these units than life can manifest
+      itself independently of an actual organism. And they make their appearance
+      in the proper environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its
+      primordial germ or vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the
+      soil. Everywhere the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the
+      plant or tree precedes the natural seeds it bears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
+      vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
+      vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
+      single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
+      living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
+      verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
+      as we may into the <i>arcana</i> of nature in search of exact scientific
+      truth, and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
+      propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
+      and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
+      inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
+      predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
+      or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
+      Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
+      we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
+      universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
+      all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
+      infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
+      such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
+      as a vehicle of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
+      may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
+      metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
+      without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
+      operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
+      intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
+      things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
+      unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
+      the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
+      God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
+      successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
+      if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
+      outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
+      insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
+      conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
+      the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
+      outside of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
+      overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
+      mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
+      uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
+      the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
+      greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
+      that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
+      an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
+      any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
+      "We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
+      attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
+      universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
+      themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
+      overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
+      one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
+      other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
+      yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
+      completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
+      which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
+      therein, originally came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
+      scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
+      will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
+      God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
+      universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
+      the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
+      independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
+      space, or time independently of eternity. [<a href="#foot29">29</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
+      essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
+      all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
+      modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
+      were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
+      that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
+      whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
+      law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
+      order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
+      the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
+      that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
+      manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
+      exhibited in scientific formul&aelig;. The higher and more satisfactory
+      induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
+      made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
+      till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
+      organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
+      point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
+      give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
+      causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
+      which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
+      potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
+      necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
+      inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
+      who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
+      position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
+      our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
+      a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
+      in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
+      once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
+      a universe
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
+      life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
+      universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
+      positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
+      before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" <i>in tandem</i>,
+      that the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
+      induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
+      of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
+      to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
+      reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
+      mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
+      nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
+      almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
+      although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
+      proportions of that scientific toy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
+      matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
+      countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
+      different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital unit"
+      can be <i>evolved</i>, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
+      "primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
+      can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
+      chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
+      nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
+      is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
+      multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
+      that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
+      confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists upon
+      drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads of
+      living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
+      earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
+      organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and vegetal
+      world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the identical
+      language we here use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
+      grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
+      can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
+      vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
+      unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
+      point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
+      microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
+      units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
+      insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
+      crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
+      beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
+      know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
+      development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
+      the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
+      knows nothing--we know nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
+      now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
+      phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
+      exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
+      a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
+      studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
+      of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
+      that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
+      fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
+      tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
+      specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
+      undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
+      Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
+      but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
+      knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
+      beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
+      reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
+      contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
+      He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
+      glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
+      distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
+      vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-<i>unit</i>
+      and the dog-<i>unit,</i> instead of falling back on his bioplastic
+      spinners and weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing
+      workers of the one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is
+      far more rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict
+      scientific methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to
+      a single direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a world-wide difference between the dog-<i>ego</i> and the man-<i>ego;</i>
+      but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
+      bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one master-<i>ego</i>
+      as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall differentiate
+      this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they shall work. Not
+      a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed by the one
+      head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts determine nothing,
+      direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as obediently as a
+      galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate movements, all
+      molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic force, are the
+      work of the one vital webster, or principle of life, within--that which
+      shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is true from the first
+      or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ," until the real
+      occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic weavers, and lies
+      down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines its own structural
+      form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to the slightest
+      impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The occupant of
+      this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers after
+      another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of woven
+      texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the same <i>physical</i>
+      dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for his master,
+      carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in the chase,
+      gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home, exhibits the
+      same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to sleep, dreams of
+      the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to engage. This
+      continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty years of
+      physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen times
+      over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
+      undifferentiated "dog-unit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
+      fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
+      bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
+      sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
+      led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
+      expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
+      cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
+      one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
+      only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
+      as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
+      conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
+      re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
+      producing it <i>de novo</i> have not yet been ascertained, nor is it
+      likely they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction
+      between crystallizable matter and living substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
+      destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
+      germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
+      environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
+      or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
+      composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
+      adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
+      developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
+      true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
+      morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
+      constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
+      doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
+      forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
+      spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
+      prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
+      the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
+      nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
+      into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
+      recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
+      at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
+      ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
+      have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
+      certain small fishes of the <i>Cyprinidae</i> and other families, have
+      made their appearance therein.[<a href="#foot30">30</a>] Nobody has
+      thought of stocking these standing pools of water with the fish in
+      question, nor has there been any surface overflow to account for their
+      presence, nor any other apparent means of transportation, if we except the
+      fish-catching birds, and they generally swallow their food in the water or
+      on the nearest tree to the point of capture. Any theory accounting for the
+      presence of spawn is, therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have
+      traversed hard clay deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to
+      make their appearance in these waters. The only possible explanation of
+      this class of phenomena, and they are by no means infrequent, is to be
+      found in "favoring conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are
+      primordial manifestations of life, and such as would have made their
+      appearance in any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under
+      the same favoring conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
+      cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
+      grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
+      principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
+      another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
+      of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
+      May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
+      countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
+      in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
+      those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
+      vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
+      persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
+      present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
+      detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
+      dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
+      grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
+      his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
+      Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
+      time, is not the question. It is the <i>fact</i> of vital growth that we
+      are after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as
+      well as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with
+      sturdy old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all <i>vital</i>
+      law--"has her seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of
+      the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
+      life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
+      constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
+      contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
+      completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
+      nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
+      and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
+      and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
+      invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
+      organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
+      elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
+      in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
+      living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
+      assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
+      and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
+      mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
+      living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
+      little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
+      principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
+      a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
+      using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
+      demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
+      intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
+      unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
+      the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
+      having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
+      mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
+      life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
+      may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
+      soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
+      fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
+      embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
+      "dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
+      theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
+      beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
+      of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
+      organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
+      except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
+      over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
+      the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
+      reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
+      Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
+      matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
+      once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
+      intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
+      anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
+      or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
+      an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
+      tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
+      of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
+      "dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
+      fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
+      endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
+      limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
+      ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
+      sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
+      nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
+      Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
+      been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
+      highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
+      force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
+      bound to except.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
+      may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
+      the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
+      all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
+      classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
+      matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
+      between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
+      germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
+      least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
+      statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
+      bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
+      mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
+      merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
+      cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
+      microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
+      cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
+      tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
+      matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
+      view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
+      vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
+      physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
+      performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
+      assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
+      species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
+      very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
+      structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
+      own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
+      these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
+      well as meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
+      is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
+      millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
+      Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
+      biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
+      comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
+      specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
+      each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
+      like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
+      together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
+      and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
+      appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
+      was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
+      direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
+      <i>in</i> all living organisms, not <i>from</i> them; directing Professor
+      Beale's "bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of
+      necessary plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first
+      instance; observing no developmental processes by which one form of life
+      laps over upon another, and following no order but that of universal
+      harmony in the Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for
+      existence, even among the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and
+      the smallest and weakest must give place to the largest and strongest
+      everywhere, and <i>vice versa</i>, as Time, the greatest of all rodents,
+      gnaws away at the mystical tree of life. But in every living organism,
+      from the lowest and simplest to the highest and most complex, all
+      bioplastic spinners of filamentous tissue, all plastide weavers of
+      membranous or spun matter, all epithelial bobbin-runners, and other
+      anatomical helpers and workers, perform their respective tasks under the
+      special supervision we have named, that is, under the higher unit of life.
+      They all work for the advancement and well-being of the higher organism of
+      which they form a component and necessarily subordinate part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
+      and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
+      from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
+      evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
+      wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
+      far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
+      mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
+      accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
+      other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
+      not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
+      carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
+      and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
+      made <i>his</i> happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
+      equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
+      upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
+      direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
+      shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells. But
+      decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale, although
+      one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is that which
+      makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have already
+      referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
+      altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
+      half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
+      vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
+      the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
+      and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
+      Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
+      something--a sort of <i>tertium quid</i>--between living and non-living
+      matter. But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his
+      carmine solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts,
+      inferentially at least, that all other matter, in any and every living
+      organism, is "dead matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no
+      matter is living in any vital organism which has not been assimilated and
+      built up into living membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case
+      of man) to his will, as well as performing the autonomous functions of
+      plants and the lower animals. For all these membranous tissues are
+      innumerably thronged with bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the
+      purposes of obedience to man's will, or of performing any autonomous
+      function, but simply to supply the tissues with the necessary nutrient
+      matter to make up for the constant waste that is going on in a healthy
+      living organ. This waste is very much greater than has heretofore been
+      supposed, so that the man or animal of to-day may be an entirely distinct
+      and separate one, considered materially, from that of a year or more ago.
+      And this averment would have a decided advantage over Professor Beale's,
+      since, in meeting a friend, we might be certain that four-fifths of him at
+      least was alive, while the other one-fifth was industriously at work to
+      keep him alive, instead of a stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be,
+      upon the street. Besides, it would obviate the necessity, on the part of
+      the vitalists, of giving themselves four-fifths away to the materialists,
+      as Professor Beale virtually does in the argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
+      life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
+      exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
+      are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
+      weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
+      plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
+      song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
+      and brilliant <i>roulades</i>, as if the little vocalist had caught its
+      inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
+      now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
+      occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
+      dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
+      to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
+      chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
+      interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
+      looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
+      ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
+      threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
+      weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
+      nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
+      any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
+      suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
+      hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
+      weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
+      music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. <i>Where</i> it is,
+      not man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
+      uplifted by inspiration, that--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The soul of music never dies,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Nor slumbers in its
+        shell;<br /> 'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;And
+        thence returns to dwell."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="09"></a>Chapter IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which
+      have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an
+      "undiscovered correlative of force." Those who have the reputation of
+      being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm
+      of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly
+      contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to
+      eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of
+      Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens
+      where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its
+      glory, this "undiscovered correlative of force," which they have indicated
+      as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.
+      Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles
+      us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were
+      they to define life as an "undiscovered force" simply, their definition
+      would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in
+      precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor
+      metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never
+      answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the
+      success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this
+      "correlative" of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since
+      they are so chary of informing us themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A "correlate" of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal
+      relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses
+      nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relationship, such as
+      father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.
+      As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this
+      particular force stands in some sort of relationship to the other forces
+      of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the <i>material</i> forces
+      of nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relationship is
+      what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the
+      universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed
+      relationship as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital
+      force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or
+      sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relationship, is not stated. The
+      scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is
+      to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to <i>x</i> (the
+      vital or unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and
+      consequents together, and eliminating the value of <i>x</i>, we may
+      mathematically obtain the value of vital force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to eliminate the value of <i>x</i> is what troubles them. Herbert
+      Spencer has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any
+      higher correlation than "molecular force;" nor can he definitely inform us
+      whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he
+      manifestly regards their relationship as constituting either a very
+      attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the
+      value of <i>x</i>, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology,
+      and gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly
+      contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in
+      scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular
+      force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not demolished,
+      this machinery, in his recent treatise on "The Mystery of Life," we will
+      spare it any further blows, and proceed to the consideration of "molecular
+      force."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us
+      definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon to
+      use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of "molecular
+      attraction," or that force acting immediately on the integrant molecules
+      or particles of a body, as distinguished from the attraction of
+      gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it comes to
+      ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to molecules, such as
+      have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must feel our way with
+      caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or rather of their
+      materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather force, that is in
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a "molecule" is
+      the smallest conceivable quantity of a simple or compound substance, as an
+      "atom" is the smallest conceivable quantity of an element which enters
+      into combination with other elements to form material substance. For
+      instance, the smallest conceivable quantity of water is a molecule, while
+      the smallest conceivable quantity of either of the two elements of which
+      water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore,
+      there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And
+      since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may
+      contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which
+      lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest
+      forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural
+      alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter,
+      and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man,
+      knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into
+      unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre,
+      and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the
+      general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on
+      the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the
+      actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest
+      hypothetical data. It is the office of "molecular force," if there is any
+      meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by "molecular attraction," to
+      conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man
+      must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks
+      and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended
+      to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war
+      with the principal phenomena of life, and should be classed with the other
+      undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as "the
+      fictions of a mechanical imagination." The truth is that these much abused
+      and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in
+      nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that
+      inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a
+      devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of
+      quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at
+      once seek quiet and loving companionship with kindred molecules, and
+      retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from
+      their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or
+      constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living
+      dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as
+      perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be
+      imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold
+      of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery
+      and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination
+      of the molecules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about
+      time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter,
+      motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the
+      multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for
+      recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing
+      the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional
+      value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and
+      vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their
+      several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not
+      emancipating language from the gross thraldom into which their "molecular
+      machinery" has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the
+      force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of
+      fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less
+      impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and
+      things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences,
+      coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable
+      chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions
+      of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and
+      foot--under the one explanatory head of "force-correlation." We protest
+      against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe,
+      even if it were practicable under scientific methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Professor Tyndall denies that "molecular groupings" and "molecular
+      motions" explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating
+      life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[<a href="#foot31">31</a>]
+      And it would be difficult to cite a stronger and more determined
+      materialist as authority on the point we are considering. He says: "If
+      love were known to be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the
+      molecules of the brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as
+      ignorant as before, as to the cause of motion." But there is no proof that
+      the molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary
+      for keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the
+      brain itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a
+      state of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been
+      exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of
+      consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there
+      can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one
+      set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules,
+      as seen in the object glass of the microscope, there is no absolute
+      certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any
+      life-manifestation, as heretofore assumed. Some quite as well defined
+      forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to
+      predicate vitality of them.[<a href="#foot32">32</a>] These infinitessimal
+      and constantly varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth
+      part of an inch in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may
+      owe their oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations,
+      and even their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes
+      than those strictly "vital." And it should be borne in mind that their
+      actual movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as
+      their real dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic
+      infusions only, they are presumably vital organisms rather than
+      fomentative or mere filamentous yeast-manifestations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place
+      under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that
+      the "primordial cells" possesses in any degree the characteristics of a
+      "machine," nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the
+      character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to
+      them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He
+      says: "They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the shells
+      scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which
+      the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the
+      cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted."
+      This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional
+      office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's "formed matter."
+      The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and
+      simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.
+      Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial
+      cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-shells have
+      been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come,
+      both the cells and shells, from the pre&euml;xisting vital units, or
+      determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement,
+      without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent
+      tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only
+      favor its manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But some of the materialists claim that what we call "vital units," or
+      invisible, indestructible germs,[<a href="#foot33">33</a>] are at best
+      only "physical relations;" that they have nothing more than a hypothetical
+      existence, without any independent recognizable quality justifying our
+      conclusions respecting them. But may not this identical language be
+      retortively suggested in the case of their "correlates of force?" What
+      more than a hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm
+      to get rid of all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a
+      feature in their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have
+      shown in the verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of
+      cause and effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical
+      aggregates, and even assign absolute identity of attributes; but when it
+      comes to dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial identity only,
+      and deny the presence of the law altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in
+      controversy. In speaking of his "plastide particles," Professor Bastian,
+      the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says:
+      "Certain of these particles, through default of <i>necessary conditions,</i>
+      never actually develop into higher modes of being." Here he makes the
+      absence of "necessary conditions" the cause of non-development, while he
+      stoutly denies that the presence of such "conditions" give rise to the
+      development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he
+      speaks of the elemental origin of "living matter" as "having probably
+      taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when
+      such matter was first engendered." But how his "sum-total of external
+      conditions," acting upon <i>dead</i> matter, can "engender" <i>living</i>
+      matter, is one of those "related heterogenetic phenomena" which he does
+      not condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that
+      he gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of
+      life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of
+      this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon
+      the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all
+      life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be
+      no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards
+      structural development, but only external conditions acting upon "dead
+      matter," in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or
+      undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped
+      stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the
+      complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their
+      integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous
+      entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as
+      well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements
+      should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous
+      complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life "engendered from
+      dead matter" in the material universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more
+      resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the happening
+      by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the "fortuitous
+      concourse of atoms;" now it is the "fortuitous aggregate of molecules." By
+      what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have dropped out of
+      their scientific categories, and the molecules have been advanced to their
+      commanding place in <i>absolute accidentalness</i>, is one of those
+      unassignable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We can only
+      account for it on the supposition that they have all become worshippers of
+      that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn of Amalthea and
+      plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of language and other
+      much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable knack at disposing of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two
+      conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary
+      environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.
+      Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning
+      incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see
+      that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by
+      merely substituting "molecular force" for "vital force," in the
+      explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do
+      take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary
+      plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not
+      dependent on the vital principle <i>as it acts</i>, rather than on the
+      molecules <i>as they act</i>,[<a href="#foot34">34</a>] The higher force
+      should always subordinate the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other
+      processes, of nature. It is the vital principle that differentiates
+      matter--the aggregate of molecules--not matter differentiating the vital
+      principle. No "mol&eacute;cules organiques" can ever differentiate an
+      ape-unit into a man-unit, any more than Professor Tyndall can fetch a
+      Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a
+      man-unit, eternally a man-unit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed <i>unit</i>
+      as "<i>une id&eacute;e dans l'entendement de Dieu," </i> (to use a better
+      French expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off
+      their own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that
+      "life exists," and that it has existed from all eternity <i>as possible</i>
+      in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic science
+      is disposed to butt its head against this impregnable proposition, it can
+      do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may happen to the
+      inconsiderate head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as
+      there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search
+      and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the
+      forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in
+      the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they
+      descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions
+      of life, or passed upward and outward, in <i>Sirius-</i>distances, to the
+      irresolvable nebul&aelig;, where other and perhaps brighter stars might
+      burst upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still
+      enormous fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same.
+      Wider and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the
+      stellar swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the
+      uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and
+      Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of space,
+      the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the
+      world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished
+      the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and
+      hangeth the earth upon nothing--"<i>holdeth back the face of his throne
+      and spreadeth his cloud upon it</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small
+      specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call "living matter," or, in
+      the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming masses which
+      we call "dead matter," who shall say that "the secret places of the Most
+      High" are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of God first moved
+      through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all
+      matter, there was not imparted to it that "animating principle of life" of
+      which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting
+      itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set
+      aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological
+      expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for
+      scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their
+      specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and
+      molecular theories of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But speaking of the higher forces as subordinating the lower, suggests
+      that there should be something more definitely explained regarding the
+      hypothesis of "differentiation," on which Mr. Herbert Spencer hangs so
+      much of his mathematical faith in the true explication of vital phenomena.
+      The term "differentiation" is not so formidable as it might seem to the
+      general reader at first sight. As applied to physiological problems it
+      should have the same determinate value, in expressing functional
+      differences, as in the higher operations of mathematics. Nothing can, of
+      course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things differentiate each
+      other, even when functionally allied. The actual co&euml;fficient sought
+      is the difference effected, in functional value, in one of two independent
+      variables. For all formul&aelig; in differentiation are constructed on the
+      hypothesis that only one of two variables suffers change. The differential
+      co&euml;fficient has yet to be determined which shall express the
+      developmental changes in two variables at once. When, therefore, we
+      attempt to extend the formul&aelig; of differentiation to plant and animal
+      life, we are confronted by a very formidable difficulty at the outset--the
+      impossibility of determining an invariable co&euml;fficient for any two
+      variables. Besides, all attempts at differentiating an ape-unit into
+      anything else than an ape-unit would be as impossible as to multiply or
+      divide cabbages by turnips, or sparrows by sparrowhawks. Such divisions
+      would give us no quotients, any more than their differentiations would
+      give us a co&euml;fficient. Physiological differentiation will, therefore,
+      never help us out of fixed species or nearly allied types. We can bridge
+      no specific differences by it. In the differentiation of the horse and the
+      ass for instance, the superior blood will predominate in the preservation
+      of types, and even the mule will kick against further differentiation.
+      Nature would so utterly abhor the practice as resolutely to slam the door
+      in Mr. Spencer's face, if the obstinacy of the mule did not kick it off
+      its hinges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And nature would be quite as intractable in the case of
+      "force-correlation," another of Mr. Spencer's redoubtable phrases. This
+      term is quite recent in its application to animate objects, nor has it
+      been long applied to inanimate. It is claimed to be a recently discovered
+      force, and is one that the materialists have seized upon as the Herculean
+      club with which to smite all vital theories to the earth. Its meaning, so
+      far as it has any, is not difficult to get at. The simplest way to explain
+      it, however, is the best. The reader is to understand that when he rubs
+      two flat sticks together, the heat thereby engendered is not the result of
+      friction, as all the world has heretofore supposed, but that the amount of
+      force expended in rubbing the right-hand stick against the left-hand
+      stick, is, by some law of versability, not over-well defined, transferred
+      to the two sticks, and gets so entangled between their surfaces that it
+      can only reappear in another and altogether different kind of force. When
+      it leaves the hands and passes into the two sticks, it is, as the
+      materialists assert, vital force. But as no force can be annihilated, the
+      conclusive assumption is that it still exists somewhere. All of it, in the
+      first place, went into the two flat sticks, and, when there, <i>ceased to
+      be vital force.</i> Some of it disappeared, of course, in overcoming the
+      inertia of the sticks, but the bulk of it became entangled with the
+      superficial molecules of the two sticks, and reappeared as <i>heat</i>--another
+      name for molecular force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what is meant by the "differentiation" of vital force into
+      molecular force, and <i>vice versa</i>. But by what process of rubbing,
+      under this law of versability, molecular force can be reversed, or
+      differentiated back into vital force, Mr. Spencer has not condescended to
+      inform us. The simple truth is, and the materialists will be forced to
+      admit it in the end, that there is no verification of this theory beyond
+      that of mere force-equivalence. For instance, it has been experimentally
+      determined that a certain amount of fuel expended in heat is equivalent to
+      a certain amount of mechanical force, not mechanical <i>work</i>, as M.
+      Carnot puts it. For force is not expended in work until it is actually
+      generated, and the amount generated, not that expended in work, is the
+      real equivalence of the heat produced from fuel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another problem is presented when it comes to determining the amount of
+      generated force necessary to run a piece of machinery which shall
+      accomplish a given amount of mechanical work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A far better phrase to express this equivalence of force has been
+      suggested and used by several writers in what is called the "Transmutation
+      of Force." For there is no correlation, or reciprocal relation, between
+      heat as originally produced by the consumption of fuel and the force as
+      engendered in steam before it is transmuted into work. Nor is there any
+      real equivalence as between the two forces after its transmutation. A very
+      large per centage of heat is lost in its transmutation from a latent form
+      in fuel to an active or available form in steam, and a still greater loss
+      in its transmission into work by machinery. Theoretically, there may be
+      such an equivalence as that named, but practically it is impossible to
+      realize it. And a theory that is impossible of realization is of no
+      practical utility in itself, and of little value as the basis of further
+      theory. If, then, the theory of force equivalence is a failure in
+      practical application, it furnishes a very poor basis on which to
+      predicate force-correlation, or the doctrine of reciprocal forces. It is
+      estimated, for instance, that a pound weight falling seven hundred and
+      seventy-two feet, will, in striking the earth, impart to it a degree of
+      heat equivalent to raising one pound of water 1&deg; F. But the heat thus
+      imparted can never be so utilized as to raise a pound weight seven hundred
+      and seventy-two feet into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This shows that there is no actual reciprocity of relationship between the
+      force as originally engendered and finally expended in work. Nor can it be
+      shown that the original force is transmuted or changed into another and
+      different kind of force by the operation. The force generated and the
+      force expended are essentially one and the same, as much so as that
+      transmitted from the power to the weight by means of a rope and pulley.
+      And the quality of the force is not changed, whether the weight be lifted
+      by machinery or the human hand. Force, in its mechanical sense, is that
+      power which produces motion, or an alteration in the direction of motion,
+      and is incapable of being specialized, except in a highly figurative
+      sense, into a thousand and one correlates of motion. But these
+      miscellaneous and figurative forces are not what we are considering. The
+      doctrine of force-correlation takes no such wide and comprehensive sweep.
+      It embraces neither the force of wit, nor the force of folly; but
+      mechanical force and its equivalents. The force exercised by the human
+      hand in lifting a weight either with or without rope and pulley is, in
+      every definitional sense of the word, mechanical force. For the arm and
+      hand are only the implements, or mechanical contrivances of nature, by
+      which the will-power transmutes itself into work, or, more properly
+      speaking, transmits itself from the point of force-generation to that of
+      force-expenditure. And this is precisely the office performed by all
+      mechanical contrivances for the transmission--not transmutation--of force.
+      And the most perfect machine is that which transmits the engendered force,
+      with the least possible waste or abandonment, to its point of ultimate
+      expenditure in work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these hypothetical correlates of force, therefore, predicated upon the
+      doctrine of force-transmutation, have no foundation in fact, since the
+      force transmitted from the point of generation to the point of expenditure
+      undergoes no change but that of direction, in its passage along rope,
+      wire, belt, pulley, shafting, etc. A man whose limbs have been paralyzed,
+      may still will to remove mountains. The will-power is the same, but the
+      mechanical contrivances for its transmission are wanting. Of the actual
+      point or centre of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power,
+      we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards
+      the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and
+      tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or
+      pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a
+      rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular
+      changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely
+      related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through the contracted
+      tissues, electrifies the crowbar, or flashes into work from the point of a
+      pickaxe. Whatever produces, or tends to produce, motion, or an alteration
+      in its direction, is mechanical force, no matter from what force-centre it
+      may start. When we can definitely determine the centre of vital force, as
+      exercised in building up vital structure, <i>not in wielding pickaxes</i>,
+      it is to be hoped we shall be able to distinguish, by the proper
+      correlates, vital force from that which is mechanical. But the task is
+      manifestly a hopeless one with the materialists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale positively denies that there are any such physical
+      force-relations as those claimed by the materialists, and asserts that
+      vital force bears no relation, or correlation, to either chemical or
+      physical force; that the one is a distinct and separate factor from the
+      other, and cannot be interpreted in the same force-formul&aelig;. He says:
+      "The idea of motion, or heat, or light, or electricity <i>forming</i> or
+      <i>building</i> up, or <i>constructing</i> any texture capable of
+      fulfilling a definite purpose, seems absurd, and opposed to all that is
+      known, and yet is the notion continually forced upon us, that vitality,
+      which does construct, is but a correlate of ordinary energy or motion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after devoting so much time to "force-correlation," and
+      "force-differentiation," the advocates of "molecular-machinery" may feel
+      themselves neglected if we dismiss their favorite hobby without further
+      notice. The precise parentage of this term is disputed, but it has any
+      number of <i>putative</i> fathers. We have spoken of the size of the
+      molecules themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled
+      together on the point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now
+      consider the size of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own
+      machine, and is provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact,
+      it is a very nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the
+      molecules, instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules
+      run the machines. Unfortunately, the question is one that can never be
+      determined. The requisite scientific data will forever be wanting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Professor James C. Maxwell, now, or quite recently, filling the chair
+      of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, England, has
+      furnished us with <i>approximate</i> calculations. On the strength of his
+      approximations we will proceed to consider the dimensions of these
+      wonderful little machines. And first, it may be axiomatically laid down
+      that these molecular machines, which either run the molecules or are run
+      by them, can never exceed the size of their respective molecules.
+      Conceding, then, that each one of these machines exactly fits into its own
+      molecule, so as to present identically the same dimensions--as well as
+      their largest possible dimensions--it would require two millions of them,
+      placed in a row, to make one millimetre, or the one three hundred and
+      ninety-four thousandths of an inch in length, or seven hundred and
+      eighty-eight billions of them to make one inch! Who will ever be staggered
+      at <i>Sirius</i>-distances, after this? And who will deny that an infinite
+      world lies below the point of our microscopic vision, if not an Infinite
+      kingdom and throne beyond our telescopic glance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, following the same high authority in experimental physics, let us
+      consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not
+      marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions
+      of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply
+      give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system.
+      Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing
+      in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet
+      kicking of the beam, just a fraction between four and five grammes, or--to
+      differentiate the weights--a small fraction over one-tenth of an ounce!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why not get down to the atoms, of which the molecules are only the
+      theoretical congeries, and marshal the "atomic forces" into line? These
+      embryonic atoms are much the braver warriors, and, when summoned to do
+      battle, spring, lithe and light-armed, against the elemental foe. They are
+      no cowardly molecules, these atoms, but make war against Titans, as well
+      as Titanic thrones and powers. The elements recognize them as their body
+      guardsmen, their corps of invincible lancers, their bravest and best
+      soldiers in fight. And they are wholly indifferent as to the legions of
+      molecules arrayed against them, and would as soon hurl a mountain of them
+      into the sea as to sport with a zephyr or caper with the east wind. Why
+      not summon these countless myriads of bright and invincible spearmen, to
+      batter down the walls of this Cretan labyrinth of Life? An army of these
+      would be worth all the molecules that Professor Maxwell could array in
+      line, in a thousand years. No life-problem need remain unsolved with their
+      bright spears to drive the tenebrious mists before them. Even Professor
+      Tyndall's "fog-banks of primordial haze" would be ignominiously scattered
+      in flight before these atomic legions. Let our materialistic friends
+      summon them, then, to their aid. The field of controversy will never be
+      won by their molecular "Hessians." The ineffably bright lancers that stand
+      guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout
+      the vitalistic enemy. Advance them then to the front, and, beneath the
+      shadowy wing of pestilence or some other appalling ensign of destruction,
+      the abashed vital squadrons will flee in dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us pass from scientific speculations to alleged scientific facts.
+      In a paper read by Dr. Hughes Bennett before the Royal Society of
+      Edinburgh, in 1861, its author says: "The first step, in the process of
+      organic formation, is the production of an organic fluid; the second, the
+      precipitation of organic molecules, from which, according to the molecular
+      law of growth, all other textures are derived either directly or
+      indirectly." Here again the molecules, and not the elementary atoms, are
+      advanced to the front, and not a little anxiety is shown, in a
+      definitional way, to identify vital processes of growth with crystalline
+      processes of formation. But Dr. Bennett entirely mistakes, as well as
+      misstates, the process of vital development, if he does not overlook the
+      law governing the formation of crystals. There can be no symmetrically
+      arranged solids in an inorganic fluid without the presence of some law, or
+      principle, definitely determining, not the "precipitation," but the
+      "formation," of crystals. The inorganic particles are not precipitated or
+      thrown downward, any more than they are sublevated or thrown upward. The
+      process is one of formation, not precipitation. Every crystallographer,
+      not hampered by materialistic views and anti-vital theories, admits the
+      presence of a fixed and determinate law governing each crystalline system,
+      whatever may be the homologous parts or the unequal axes it represents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so of the equally undeviating law of vital growth. Life comes from no
+      mere "precipitation of organic molecules," as Dr. Bennett would have us
+      believe. If so, what is it that precipitates the molecules? They can
+      hardly be said to precipitate themselves. To precipitate, in a chemical
+      sense, is to be thrown down, or caused to be thrown down, as a substance
+      from its solution. What, then, causes the molecules to be thus
+      precipitously thrown down from a fluid to a solid, or a semi-solid, state?
+      It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the
+      molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of
+      nature--one presupposing an intelligent law-giver--to effect the
+      "precipitating process," if any such really exists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it does not exist. The first step is one of development and
+      growth--the manifestation of functional activity--the building up of
+      organic or cellular tissue. The exact process, in the case of seed-bearing
+      plants and trees, is well known. All those familiar with the
+      characteristic differences of seeds, their chemical constituents, their
+      tegumentary coverings, rudimentary parts, etc., thoroughly understand the
+      process in its outward manifestation. There is no precipitation of
+      molecules as in an organic fluid, unless the albumen lying between the
+      embryo and testa of the seeds, and constituting the nutriment on which the
+      plant feeds during its primary stages of growth, can be called a fluid. It
+      throws none of its characteristic ingredients downward any more than
+      upward. Indeed the greater tendency of its molecules is upward rather than
+      downward, in the "molecular processes" (vital ones) by which the embryonic
+      cell is started upon its career of plant-life. The celebrated Dr. Liebig
+      says of this albuminous environment: "It is the foundation, the
+      starting-point, of the whole series of peculiar tissues which constitute
+      those organs which are the seat of all vital actions." In the case of
+      animal life, this albumen abounds in the serum of the blood, enters
+      largely into the chyle and lymph, goes to build up the tissues and
+      muscles, and is the chief ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the
+      brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to
+      coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries
+      to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less
+      insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140&deg; to 160&deg;
+      F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the seed is planted or placed in water, it first commences to swell
+      from the absorption of the water or moisture of the ground by the pores of
+      its external covering, the favorable temperature being from 60&deg; to 80&deg;
+      F. It gradually expands until its outer membranes burst, and its initial
+      rootlets clasp their hold upon the earth. From this point its several
+      stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the
+      first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a
+      change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it
+      would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in
+      decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the
+      grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the
+      Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the
+      decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened
+      into life--ascends into the bright light, the warm sunshine, the
+      refreshing presence of showers and dews. In this way it fulfils its
+      providential purpose of yielding to the sower the more munificent life
+      which he is forever seeking to attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its germination is the springing up of the inner living principle of the
+      grain, not its outer envelope or dead husk. This disappears in decay,
+      except the small nutrient portion within which the germinal principle of
+      life would seem to reside, and which undergoes a thorough chemical change
+      in the process of passing from death unto life, or being assimilated and
+      taken up into the new living structure. The Apostle's comparison
+      distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from
+      death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still
+      more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the
+      dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher
+      and more perfect life--the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in
+      the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and
+      co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally
+      constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing
+      agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the
+      present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and
+      decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most
+      beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death,
+      and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of
+      life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="10"></a>Chapter X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-Point.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Granting that the assumption of Darwinism rests, as claimed, on the fixed
+      and inflexible adaptation of means to ends, in the diversified yet
+      measurably specialized processes of nature, there is no logical deduction
+      to be drawn therefrom but that which traces the representatives of all the
+      great types of the animal kingdom to one single source, and that not the
+      Sovereign Intelligence of the Universe, but a mere "ovule in protoplasm,"
+      or what may be defined, in its unaggregated form, as an inconceivably
+      small whirligig, having motion on a central axis, but whether an
+      independent motion of its own, or one derived from an Infinite
+      Intelligence, the Darwinian systematizers are not bold enough to aver.
+      They have too many <i>a priori</i> scruples either to assert the one
+      proposition or to deny the other. What set this little whirligig in motion
+      is a mystery that lies beyond the purview of science, so called, and into
+      the depths of this infinitessimal and most mysterious little chamber they
+      refuse to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They search not for the evidence of an Infinite Intelligence in the
+      outermost circle of the heavens where the highest is to be found, and
+      where a bound is set that we may not pass, but shutting their eyes to all
+      the grander evidences of such an Intelligence, they dive down into the
+      infinitessimal realm of nature and assume to dig out the sublimer secrets
+      of the universe there. And this is their grand discovery: That this
+      infinitessimal whirligig of theirs has not only whirled man into
+      existence, but the entire circle of the heavens, with the innumerable host
+      of stars that march therein, and all the boundless systems of worlds that
+      roll in space. With this subordination of the Infinite to the
+      infinitessimal, of intelligence to insensate matter, of divine energy, so
+      to speak, to blind molecular force, they are satisfied; and, like the mole
+      in the fable, conceive their little molecule to be the only possible
+      creator of a stupendous universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating
+      theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or
+      the old adage, <i>omne vivum ex ovo</i>--all life is from an egg. For they
+      assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in
+      protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being
+      this little <i>ovum</i> or cellule, from which have issued all possible
+      organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory
+      essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific co&ouml;rdination of
+      its several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of
+      this infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state
+      of all matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of
+      past time, not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so
+      stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the
+      first conception of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of
+      development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the
+      reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the
+      incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the
+      "selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a
+      beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things
+      right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development
+      begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he
+      admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato,
+      Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of
+      legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long
+      one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's
+      philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined
+      empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the
+      universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive
+      sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity
+      for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's
+      philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena,
+      in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away
+      the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new
+      varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in
+      obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be
+      called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that,
+      however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of
+      uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not
+      only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical
+      deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of
+      uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or
+      approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in
+      the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link
+      connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest
+      known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher
+      congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no
+      saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The
+      heights of science are not to be scaled <i>per saltum</i>, except as
+      degrees may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[<a href="#foot35">35</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like
+      the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of
+      amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and
+      improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what
+      page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back,
+      has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the
+      relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of
+      the <i>Infusoria</i> possess the same or similar characteristics, and
+      predicate relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants
+      sometimes spring from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our
+      diagnoses must be freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the
+      chain of continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the
+      imaginary foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most
+      enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid
+      partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been
+      pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future
+      discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science,
+      inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no
+      assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we
+      constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of
+      imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars
+      into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of
+      creation after truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he
+      meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the
+      first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is
+      from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate
+      to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges
+      it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his <i>primum mobile</i>--or
+      on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the eye of
+      imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not matter
+      itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary constituent
+      of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its unaggregated form,
+      admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of comprehension; but rests
+      entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here add that a system which
+      begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in them--as that of bridging the
+      chasmal difference between a gorilla and a Plato--can be dignified into a
+      science only by a still greater stretch of the imagination--that of
+      bridging the difference between the Darwinian zero and his ninety degrees
+      of development in a Darwin himself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in
+      philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists
+      between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not
+      self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic
+      life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation
+      existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of
+      matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and
+      there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as
+      extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts
+      are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction
+      exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in
+      our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where
+      reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once
+      aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of
+      these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have
+      before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we
+      follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the
+      blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these
+      intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found
+      anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied
+      upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as
+      unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two
+      ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No
+      processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the
+      elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual
+      judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the
+      world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to
+      "Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary <i>datum</i>
+      of consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on
+      something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since
+      science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged,
+      furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of
+      inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived,
+      necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to
+      the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its
+      inseparable companion and guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in
+      the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, <i>was</i> God,--or on Mr.
+      Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and
+      has only to go on <i>ad infinitum</i> to whirl us out a God, as it has
+      already whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this
+      ovulistic whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm
+      and man, since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the
+      process has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between
+      man and Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us
+      nature evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a
+      God presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations
+      of the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the
+      heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+      waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These evolutionists manifestly get the cart before the horse in their
+      category of cosmological events. It is not inert matter organizing itself
+      into life, nor any mode of physical or chemical action, nor any mere
+      manifestation of motion or of heat, nor any other conceivable correlation
+      of natural forces. None of these has enabled us to penetrate the
+      mysterious <i>inner-chamber</i> of life itself. For reasons obviously
+      connected with our own welfare, He, from whom alone are "the issues of
+      life," seems to have ordained that we should fathom the depths of both
+      physical and chemical force, and beneficently wield and direct them to our
+      own uses. But this vital force; this something that stands apart from and
+      is essentially different from all other kinds of force, is of a nature
+      that baffles all our efforts to approach. The power to grasp it, or even
+      to penetrate in the slightest degree its mysteries, is delegated to none.
+      All attempts to lay bare this principle of vitality, or level the barriers
+      that separate it from physical or chemical action, have utterly failed. We
+      know no more of its essence now than was known a thousand years ago, and
+      know no less than will be known a thousand years hence. To become masters
+      of the mystery, we must enter the impenetrable veil within which the
+      Infinite Intelligence of the universe presides,--who, we are told,
+      "sendeth forth his spirit, and we are created, who taketh away our breath,
+      we die and return to our dust." [<a href="#foot36">36</a>] We are just as
+      much bewildered in respect to this vital principle in our classifications
+      of the myriads of little creatures careering over the field of the
+      microscope, as when we turn to the most marked formations of genera and
+      species in geological distribution. The great trouble with Mr. Darwin's <i>vinculum</i>
+      is, that its weakest links are precisely where the strongest should be
+      found, and <i>vice versa</i>. With a candor rarely displayed by a writer
+      who is spinning a theory, he admits this. The geological record is not
+      what he would have it to be. Whole chapters are gone where they are most
+      needed, and nature's lithography seems constantly at fault. Independent
+      species are now and then springing up where derivatives should be looked
+      for, while derivatives are everywhere disappearing in non-derivatives.
+      Many of the middle Tertiary <i>molusca</i>, and a large proportion of the
+      later Tertiary period, are specifically identical with the living species,
+      of to-day. What has "natural selection" been doing for this family in the
+      last million years or more? Manifestly nothing, and less than nothing, for
+      some of the species have dropped out altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These facts, and hundreds of others like them, are constantly obtruding
+      themselves upon our attention to show, in harmony with the Bible Genesis,
+      the immutability of species--the absolute fixity of types--rather than
+      their variability, as claimed. If nature abhors anything more than a <i>vacuum</i>,
+      it is manifestly any marked transition from fixed types, and she thunders
+      her edicts against it in the non-fertility of all hybrids. The doctrine of
+      variation lacks the all-essential element of continuity, and is oftener at
+      war with the theory of the "selection of the fittest," than it is with the
+      selection of the "unfit." The leap from Lepidosirens to Amphibians is no
+      greater than the interval between any two species of animals or plants yet
+      discovered, either fossil or living. The intervals are as numerous as the
+      species themselves, and everywhere constitute great and sudden leaps, or
+      such transitional changes as "natural selection" could not have effected
+      independently of intervening forms--those that nowhere exist in nature,
+      and never have existed, if we are to credit geologic and paleontologic
+      records. There is everywhere similarity of structure, but not identity;
+      and the nearer we approach to identity of structure the wider the
+      divergence in similarity of characteristics. A bird may be taught to talk
+      and sing snatches of music. But no monkey has ever been able to articulate
+      human sounds, much less give them rhythmical utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take the case of the wild pigeon, a subject that especially delights Mr.
+      Darwin. Most of the deviations are confined to the domesticated breeds,
+      and none of these rank in strength, hardiness, capability of flight, or
+      symmetry of structure, with the wild or typical bird. There are
+      well-defined deviations, but no sensible improvements, except to the eye
+      of the bird-fancier. The deviations are simply entailed weaknesses, or the
+      very reverse of what should appear from the "selection of the fittest."
+      The fact undeniably is, that these variations are almost wholly
+      abnormal--mere exaggerated characteristics, induced in the first instance,
+      perhaps, by high cultivation and close in-and-in breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turn these abnormal varieties loose, let them go back to the aboriginal
+      stock, and these characteristics will rapidly disappear; that is, they
+      will ultimately lose themselves or melt away in the original type. Mr.
+      Darwin admits that the tendency will be to reversion, but he insists,
+      manifestly without any positive proof therefor, that the greater tendency
+      is to new centres of attraction, and not necessarily the primitive one.
+      But this is mere assumption--sheer begging the question on his
+      part,--since all the oscillations are incontestibly about the original or
+      type centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same may be said of the typical races of men, like the negro and wild
+      Indian of our prairies. You may lift them out of their primitive
+      condition--temporarily suspend, if you please so to put it, their
+      primordial attraction,--but, left again to themselves, they will go back
+      to the original type; that is, their offspring will again infest the
+      jungles and roam their native hunting-grounds. The process here is the
+      very reverse of the Darwinian theory. Reversion, as a rule, follows the
+      degeneracy of types, instead of there being any favorable homogeneous
+      result, springing from a new centre of attraction. The Indian makes a
+      splendid savage, but a very poor white man. Think of Red Jacket taking the
+      part of Mercutio in the play or enacting the more valiant <i>role</i> of
+      Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth. An infusion of white blood does not
+      help the matter, but rather makes it worse. Generally, the meanest Indian
+      on the continent is your half-breed, and among the negroes there is no
+      term so expressive of the contempt of that race, as that applied by them
+      to a mulatto. The present condition of Mexico affords a striking
+      exemplification of this law of reversion. The inheritable characteristics
+      or variations, produced from an infusion of Spanish blood, are rapidly
+      disappearing--the native blood whipping out the European. The potency is
+      in the inferior blood, simply because it is the predominating one. The
+      result has been no homogeneous new race, but a reversion, now manifestly
+      in progress, to the type centre or aboriginal stock. And the curse
+      pronounced by Ezekiel upon mongrel tribes--"woe unto the mingled peoples"
+      may have a significance in this connection worth considering; but it
+      manifestly falls outside the scope of our present inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In considering the embryological structure of man, and the homologies he
+      therein presents to the lower animals, Mr. Darwin thus conclusively (in
+      his judgment) remarks: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
+      quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in
+      his habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Darwin's pronominal "we," in this connection, admits of
+      qualification. He can hardly speak for all the scientific world at once.
+      The philosophical maxim of Sir Isaac Newton--<i>hypotheses non fingo</i>--I
+      build no hypotheses, make no suppositions, but adhere to facts--has a few
+      followers still left. But what are Mr. Darwin's facts? Has he yet
+      discovered the caudal man, except as the ever-fertile Mr. Stanley heard of
+      one in Africa? And where is his monkey that first lost the prehensile
+      power to climb trees? For bear in mind that it was the loss of this
+      prehensile power that resulted in the caudal atrophy of our monkey
+      progenitors, <i>who became men simply because they were tailless monkeys!</i>
+      They had lost their power to climb trees, and accordingly had no longer
+      any use for tails to let themselves down from the limbs. A "beneficent
+      necessity" therefore, according to Mr. Emerson, dropped the tail as
+      something decidedly "unfit." For the simplest tyro in Darwinian philosophy
+      will see that the loss of the Catarrhine monkey's tail, if it ever
+      occurred, could not have resulted from the "selection of the fittest." The
+      deeper Emersonian philosophy of the "rejection of the unfit," affords the
+      only solution of the difficulty, and then only on the assumption that the
+      tail is an unfit appendage for the monkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the loss of his tail, in the light of this new genesis, the monkey
+      necessarily ceased to be arboreal in his habits. He could no longer
+      subsist on the fruits and nuts of trees, or take refuge therein from his
+      enemies. He had to go to work and make weapons to defend himself--to
+      construct tools--make and set traps, live on his wits, and not on his
+      prehensile power to climb trees. He soon discovered, of course, that the
+      longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride
+      towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic
+      philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this
+      was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more
+      masterly feats of agility than ever,--those dependent, not on muscular
+      function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow.
+      Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he
+      improved under this maternal instructor we are left to infer from the
+      paramount conclusion of Mr. Darwin, <i>that the demoralized monkey became
+      the incipient man</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
+      differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the loss
+      of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's brain?
+      or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
+      differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous and
+      demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every bone,
+      muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the same. The
+      chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are differently
+      bundled and differently strung. In intonations of voice--symmetry of arms,
+      legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic and land habits, the frog
+      is a much nearer approach to man than the monkey, as all caricaturists,
+      delineating aldermanic proportions, will agree. And Mr. Darwin might have
+      immortalized himself by deriving the builders of the ancient
+      pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats and croakers of the Swiss
+      lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For everybody knows, or thinks he
+      knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he didn't wag it off, he certainly
+      absorbed its waggishness as a distinguishing characteristic of the "coming
+      man"--the future Artemas Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral
+      origin will also account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all
+      human juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
+      relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
+      encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
+      on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
+      agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
+      loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor does
+      he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated development." He is
+      more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than any other, and finds
+      the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That is, he assumes that
+      among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the Tertiary or some other
+      period, some female monkeys were less hirsute than others, and that they
+      naturally preferred males possessing similar characteristics. These
+      divergencies were thus commenced, and, by continuous "sexual selection,"
+      the infirmity (for such he regards the loss of hair) was propagated until
+      the race was almost entirely denuded or bereft of this covering. In the
+      same way he accounts for nearly all the differentiations of the race,
+      among the various tribes now or formerly inhabiting the earth. All have
+      sprung from the same semi-human progenitors--<i>apes that lost their
+      capacity to subsist as apes, and hence found it necessary to subsist as
+      men</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The law of degeneracy has, therefore, had quite as much to do with human
+      origins as that of progressive development. In fact, it is the paramount
+      law from a Darwinian stand-point. For the loss of hair and of the
+      prehensile power to climb trees are both conceded by Mr. Darwin to be
+      serious defects and drawbacks in the ape family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the law of sexual selection, as treated by the evolutionists, is not
+      scientifically accurate, nor is it true in fact. The loving tendency of
+      nature is to opposites, not likes. The positive and negative poles are
+      those that play into each other with most marvellous effect. Each repels
+      its like and rushes to the embrace of its opposite. Extremes lovingly meet
+      everywhere. A brunette selects a blonde and a blonde a brunette, as a
+      general rule in matrimony. A tall man or woman, with rare exceptions,
+      chooses a short companion for life. Dark eyes delight in those that are
+      light, and <i>vice-versa</i>. Everywhere nature seeks diversity, not
+      similitude. The gayest and brightest feathered songster craves
+      companionship in modest and unobtrusive colors. Diversity is the law of
+      life, as equality, or versimilitude, is that of death. Neither natural
+      selection, nor sexual selection, runs counter to this law. If Mr. Darwin's
+      theory were true, that likes selected likes, then the two marked extremes
+      which should have characterized the race, soon after its emergence from
+      the semi-human state, should have been giants and pigmies, Gargantuas and
+      Lilliputs. Otherwise "sexual selection," as treated by its author, plays
+      no intelligible part in the economy of nature, except to counterbalance
+      variability, not to propagate it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Darwinian assumption that the primeval man, or his immediate
+      ape-like progenitor, came through "natural selection," that is, through
+      the "survival of the fittest," is subject to one or two other objections
+      which we shall briefly notice. And the first objection is not altogether a
+      technical one. The term "fittest," as applied to a monkey, has at once a
+      definite and comprehensive significance to us. It implies the presence of
+      whatever is most perfect of its kind in the monkey <i>as</i> a monkey, and
+      not in the monkey <i>as</i> something else than a monkey. They are all
+      admirably adapted for climbing trees; and it is this adaptation that
+      secures them safety, or complete immunity, in shelter from their enemies.
+      To say that nature selects the fittest for them--for any species of
+      monkey--by converting their forefeet into rudimentary hands, with a loss
+      of prehension and no corresponding advantages in locomotion, is to use
+      language without any appreciable significance to us. We can only say that
+      what is fittest for the monkey is ill-fitted for man, and the reverse.
+      This is all we can definitely predicate of them, from what we know of
+      their anatomical structure, and the diversified uses to which it may be
+      put.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, as the Bible genesis shows, that every living thing is
+      perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian
+      variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of
+      this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of
+      Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth
+      abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so,
+      and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind,
+      and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake is
+      no less perfect than a Plato or a John Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we consider man's upright position; the firmness and steadiness with
+      which he plants his foot upon the earth; when we examine the mechanism of
+      his hand, and the wonderful and almost unlimited range it possesses for
+      diversified use; when we see how ill-fitted he is for climbing trees, yet
+      how express and admirable for climbing among the stars, even to the
+      outermost milky-way, the idea that what is fittest for him is fit for the
+      chattering monkey, is too absurd to give us pause. And yet how does Mr.
+      Darwin know that the monkey has been climbing up, all these hundred
+      thousand or million years, into man, as one of the congenital freaks of
+      nature, and not man shambling down into the monkey as a reverse congenital
+      freak. Children have sometimes been born with a singular resemblance to
+      the ape family, but no ape has ever, to Mr. Darwin's knowledge, produced
+      issue more manlike than itself. The divergencies run the wrong way to meet
+      the conditions of the development theory. We have had nearly five thousand
+      years in which to mark these transitional changes, and yet the monkey of
+      to-day is identical with that painted on the walls of ancient Meroe. In
+      all this time he has made no advance in the genetic relation; and if we
+      turn back the lithographic pages of nature for a hundred times five
+      thousand years, we shall find no essential departure from aboriginal
+      types.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Darwinian hypothesis admits of a more conclusive answer than we
+      have yet given. Past time, it will be conceded, is theoretically if not
+      actually infinite; and in all past time, nature has been tugging away at
+      Mr. Darwin's problem of the "survival of the fittest." It is no two
+      hundred and fifty thousand years, nor two hundred and fifty millions, but
+      an infinite duration of past time that covers the period in which she has
+      been wrestling with this problem. How successfully has she solved it? In
+      the Darwinian sense of the term "fittest," she has not so much as stated
+      her first equation or extracted the root of her first power. She is
+      manifestly as much puzzled over the problem as Mr. Darwin himself. He
+      fails to see that the "survival of the fittest," necessarily implies, or
+      carries with it, the correlative proposition,--the "non-survival of the
+      unfit." And when such a law has been operative for an infinite duration of
+      past time, the "unfit," however infinitely distributed at first, should
+      have disappeared altogether, many thousands, if not millions, of years
+      ago. If the evolutionists are dealing with vast problems, and assigning to
+      nature, unlimited factors to express the totality of her unerring
+      operations, they must be careful to limit the time in which any one of her
+      given labors is to be accomplished. If she makes any progress at all, an
+      infinite duration of past time should enable her to complete her work just
+      as effectually as an infinite duration of time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But by what law of "natural selection," appertaining to a single pair of
+      old world monkeys, have their offspring advanced to this regal state of
+      manhood, while all other pairs have remained stationary, or precisely
+      where they were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago or more? Why this
+      exceptional divergence in the case of a single pair of monkeys? Why this
+      anomalous, aberrant, and thoroughly eccentric movement on the part of
+      nature? We had supposed that her operations were uniform--conformable to
+      fixed laws of movement. The doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"
+      implies this. Why then, should nature, in her unerring operations, have
+      selected the fittest in respect to a single pair of Catarrhine monkeys,
+      and at the same time rejected the fittest in the case of a million other
+      pairs? If she had selected only the fittest in respect to this old world
+      stock of monkeys, the entire Catarrhine family should have disappeared in
+      the next higher or fitter group--a group nowhere to be found in geological
+      distribution. The break between man and this Catarrhine monkey covers
+      quite a series of links in the genetic vinculum;[<a href="#foot37">37</a>]
+      and yet between the two we find no high form of a low type fitting into a
+      low form of a high type, as we manifestly should, to account for all the
+      diversified changes that must have taken place in the interim. And what is
+      true of the types is measurably true of the classes within the types, as
+      well as of the orders within the classes. Wide deviations in forms, as in
+      characteristics, would seem to be the invariable rule; the blending of
+      type into type, except perhaps in remote relationships, is nowhere
+      visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if "variation" and "natural selection" have played important parts in
+      the economy of nature, why may not "specific creation" have played <i>its</i>
+      part also? Positive science can hardly flatter itself with the belief that
+      it is rolling back the mystery of the universe to a point beyond which
+      "specific creation" might not have commenced, or the divine fiat been put
+      forth. To believe in the possibility of a rational synthesis, limited to
+      sensible experience, or phenomenal facts within our reach, that shall
+      climb from law to law, or from concrete fact to abstract conception, until
+      it shall reach the <i>Ultima Thule</i> of all law, is to carry the faith
+      of the scientist beyond the most transcendental belief of the theologian,
+      and make him a greater dupe to his illusions than was ever cloistered in a
+      monastery or affected austerity therein as a balm to the flesh. We may
+      substitute new dogmatisms for old ones, but we can never postulate a
+      principle that shall make the general laws of nature any less mysterious
+      than the partial or exceptional, or that shall in the long run, render
+      "natural selection" any more comprehensible, or acceptable to the rational
+      intuition, than "specific creation." For while one class of scientists is
+      climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law
+      that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more
+      analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by
+      divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief
+      of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage
+      of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the
+      human mind is ever towards this abstract conception--this one
+      all-encompassing law of the universe. It steadily speculates in this
+      direction, and some of the highest triumphs of our age, in physical as
+      well as metaphysical science, are measurably due to this tendency. The
+      scientific mind is not confined wholly to experimental research. It is
+      stimulated to higher contemplations, and is constantly disposed to make
+      larger and more comprehensive groupings of analogous facts. It is fast
+      coming to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,
+      chemical affinity, molecular force, and even Mr. Darwin's little
+      whirligig, as only so many manifestations or expressions of one and the
+      same force in the universe--that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force
+      (not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens,
+      "binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his
+      season, and guides Arcturus with his suns."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the boast of the Darwinian systematizers that their development
+      theory not only harmonizes with, but admirably supplements and out-rounds
+      the grander speculation of Laplace, termed the "Nebular Hypothesis," which
+      regards the universe as having originally consisted of uniformly diffused
+      matter, filling all space, which subsequently became aggregated by
+      gravitation, much after the manner of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig, into
+      an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+      space. Of the correctness of this hypothesis it is unnecessary to speak.
+      It is to the Darwinian speculation what the infinite is to the
+      infinitessimal, and we only refer to it to bring out the vastness of the
+      conception as compared to the latter theory, and to predicate thereon the
+      more conclusive induction that an Infinite Intelligence directs and
+      superintends all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an area in the Milky-way not exceeding one-tenth of the moon's disc,
+      Mr. Herschel computes the number of stars at not less than twenty
+      thousand, with clusters of nebulae lying still beyond. As we know that no
+      bodies shining by reflected light could be visible at such enormous
+      distances, we are left to conclude that each of these twinkling points is
+      a sun, dispensing light and heat to probably as many planets as hold their
+      courses about the central orb in our own system. From the superior
+      magnitude of many of the stars, as compared with the sun, we may
+      reasonably infer that many of these vast sun-systems occupy a much larger
+      field in space than our own. This would give an area in space of not less
+      than six thousand millions of miles as the field occupied by each of these
+      sun-systems. And as the distance between each of these systems and its
+      nearest neighbor is probably not less than that of our sun from the
+      nearest star, we have the enormous and inconceivable distance of not less
+      than nineteen billions of miles separating each one of these twenty
+      thousand stars or sun-systems, occupying a space in the heavens apparently
+      no bigger than a man's hand. And yet Infinity, as we apprehend the term,
+      lies beyond this vast cluster of constellated worlds! Where is Mr.
+      Darwin's little whirligig in the comparison, or Mr. Emerson's vegetal
+      stomach, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's "potential factors," to express the
+      sum-total of all this totality,--this gigantic assemblage of stars
+      clustered about a single point in the Milky-way? The human mind absolutely
+      reels--staggers bewildered and amazed--under the load of conceptions
+      imposed by these few twinkling stars, and is ready to exclaim,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Oh, star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,<br /> To waft us back a
+        message of despair?"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible
+      in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with
+      inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of
+      the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how
+      unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of <i>Mr. Darwin's little
+      whirligig as the author of it all!</i> No wonder the inspired Psalmist
+      exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
+      his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens
+      declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the
+      immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration
+      lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem,
+      while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing
+      beneath the glebe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre
+      of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of
+      sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the
+      Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding
+      all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central
+      point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with
+      nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must
+      be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe,
+      to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical
+      induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their
+      orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why
+      not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and
+      utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It
+      can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it
+      has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our
+      post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that
+      science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not
+      Infinite Intelligence accomplish?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a
+      coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal
+      only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize
+      quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the
+      theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to
+      a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in
+      climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when
+      concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the
+      ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G.
+      Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also
+      insists that when <i>a priori</i> speculation is lost in abstract
+      conceptions, the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions
+      of consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is
+      undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we
+      stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if
+      in the august presence of Deity itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of
+      consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the
+      universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In
+      supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of
+      Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of
+      aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still
+      going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or
+      energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself
+      in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the
+      universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential
+      energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already
+      resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other
+      heavenly bodies.[<a href="#foot38">38</a>] All the exterior planets, or a
+      majority of them at least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled
+      worlds, or those in which all life has hopelessly ceased and become
+      extinct. All has utterly disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's
+      couplets,
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,<br /> Nor glass can
+        reach--from zoophyte to man."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many
+      immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science,
+      except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe,
+      resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent
+      clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian
+      whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream,
+      which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun
+      extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless,
+      and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it!
+      Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers,
+      and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a <i>credo</i>
+      only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable the
+      simple faith of the star-led Magi, who
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Deeming the light that in the east was seen An earnest and a prophecy of
+      rest To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to
+      the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Footnotes
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot1" id="foot1"></a>1. : It may be proper, however, to state
+      that the tenth and concluding chapter was originally written as a lecture,
+      and delivered about a year ago in New Haven, Boston, and at other points.
+      A request for its publication has induced the author to place it in this
+      volume, with the portion referring to the Bible genesis omitted. It will
+      be found germane to the general subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot2" id="foot2"></a>2. : "Without this latent presence of the
+      'I am,' all modes of existence in the external world flit before us as
+      colored shadows, with no greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of
+      a rock hath in the gliding stream, or the rainbow on the fast-sailing rain
+      storm."--<i>Coleridge's</i> "<i>Comments on Essays</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot3" id="foot3"></a>3. : And science that is not purely
+      inductive--i.e. primarily based on the inviolability of our intuitions--is
+      no science at all, but the sheerest possible speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot4" id="foot4"></a>4. : This presence of an active living
+      principle in nature, one originally assigned as the "<i>divina particula
+      aur&aelig;</i>" of every living thing, is frequently referred to in the
+      higher inspirational moods of our poets. Wordsworth exquisitely refers to
+      it in the following lines of his "Excursion:"--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote class="verse">
+      <p>
+        "To every form of being is assigned<br /> An <i>active</i> principle:
+        howe'er removed<br /> From sense and observation, it subsists<br /> In all
+        things, in all nature, in the stars<br /> Of azure heaven, the unenduring
+        clouds; <br /> In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone<br /> That paves
+        the brooks."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot5" id="foot5"></a>5. : The existence of vital units is
+      conceded by some of the staunchest materialists, such as Herbert Spencer,
+      Professor Bastian and others. Professor Bastian says: "The countless
+      myriads of living units which have been evolved in different ages of the
+      world's history, must, in each period, have given rise to innumerable
+      multitudes of what have been called 'trees of life.'" He insists, however,
+      that they have been "evolved" from something, or by some unknown process.
+      But we shall show further on that a "unit" can neither be <i>evolved</i>
+      nor <i>involved</i>, and that this is as true of vital units as of the
+      mathematical or chemical unit. Neither evolution nor involution will ever
+      effect the value of a unit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot6" id="foot6"></a>6. : According to Aristotle, the great
+      world-<i>ordainer</i> is the constant world-<i>sustainer</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot7" id="foot7"></a>7. : The definition which Professor
+      Robinson, in his Lexicon of the New Testament, gives of the word &sigma;&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&alpha;,
+      as connected with the "divine life," entirely harmonizes with this view of
+      the subject. He says: Trop. I John 3, 9, &pi;ἃ&sigmaf; ό &gamma;&epsilon;&gamma;&epsilon;&nu;&eta;&mu;έ&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf;
+      ἐ&kappa; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon; &thetasym;&epsilon;&omicron;&upsilon;
+      &sigma;&pi;έ&rho;&mu;&alpha; ἀ&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&nu; (&thetasym;&epsilon;ὄ&nu;)
+      &epsilon;&nu; ᾶ&nu;&tau;ῶ &pi;&epsilon;&nu;&epsilon;ὶ <i>i.e.</i> the germ
+      or principle of divine life through which he is begotten of god, &tau;&omicron;
+      &pi;&nu;&epsilon;ὒ&mu;&alpha;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot8" id="foot8"></a>8. : Professor Schmidt, of the University
+      of Strasburg, who insists that species are only relatively stable, admits
+      that they remain persistent as long as they exist under the same external
+      conditions. Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species.
+      Nor are environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions
+      results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of conditions
+      results in their appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot9" id="foot9"></a>9. : Says M. Ch. Bonnet, in his "La Paling&eacute;u&eacute;sie
+      Philosophique;" "Il est de la plus parfaite &eacute;vidence que la matiere
+      est susceptible d'une infinit&eacute; de mouvemens divers, et de
+      modifications diverses," and this is the universal claim of the
+      materialists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot10" id="foot10"></a>10. : Professor Burdach (as trad, par
+      Jourdan), in speaking of the productive power of nature, says, "Limit&eacute;e
+      quant &aacute; l' &eacute;tendue de ses manifestations, elle continue
+      toujottrs d' agir pour la conservation de ce qui a &eacute;t&eacute; cr&eacute;&eacute;,
+      et, quoiqu' elle ne maintenue les formes organiques sup&eacute;rieures que
+      par la seule propagation, il ne r&eacute;pugne point au bon sens de penser
+      qu' aujourd' hui encore elle a la puissance de produire les formes inf&eacute;rieures
+      avec des el&eacute;ments h&eacute;t&eacute;rog&eacute;nes, comme elle a cr&eacute;&eacute;
+      originairement tout ce qui poss&eacute;de l' organisation." This shows
+      that its author believed in the possibility of the "superior organic
+      forms," like the mastodon, megatherium, etc. from the "heterogenetic
+      elements"--those undergoing every conceivable change--as well as the
+      "inferior forms." At all events, it is a legitimate induction from
+      materialistic premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot11" id="foot11"></a>11. : This point is conclusively made by
+      Professor Burdach, who says (we quote from Jourdan); "La tendance
+      interieure &aacute; la configuration existe avant sa manifestation." And
+      by his <i>tendance interieure</i> he must mean some vital or other law,
+      equivalent to an <i>entia</i> in matter, which results <i>in</i>, not <i>from</i>
+      manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot12" id="foot12"></a>12. : Goethe borrowed his idea of an
+      archetypal world from Plato and the Eleatic school. They held that the
+      world was originated, and not eternal; that it was framed by the Creator
+      after a perfect archetype, one eternally existing in the divine mind, if
+      not an actual soul-world of which our own is but the reflex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot13" id="foot13"></a>13. : In a note to Prof. Bastian's
+      "Beginnings of Life" (vol II. p. 537) an important fact is mentioned as
+      obtained from the writings of Dr. Schneider, to wit, that <i>Nematoids</i>
+      (microscopical forms) may be "obtained at will," almost as readily as
+      mushrooms, by a process entirely independent of spores. For instance,
+      small pieces of beef were carefully examined to see if they contained any
+      of the ova of Nematoids, and, finding none, they were buried in a small
+      quantity of earth (also carefully examined for the presence of Nematoids
+      or their ova) in a gallipot. "After three weeks," says Prof. B. "this
+      earth was found to be absolutely swarming with two kinds of
+      Nematoids--quite different from any forms which I had previously, seen,
+      although I had been seeking them for more than two years previously in all
+      sorts of situations." The reason why he had not found them previously, was
+      because the "necessary conditions" for their appearance had not been
+      obtained by him, or he had not sought for them in their proper
+      environment. They were not produced "at will," but were the natural
+      outgrowth of conditions, as much so as the spores of fungi, which make
+      their appearance whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions
+      exist. According to Dr. Gros, it takes about three weeks for these
+      Nematoid forms to develop into a reproductive state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot14" id="foot14"></a>14. : The necessity of turning plants and
+      animals into "tramps" is just as great in the case of "Evolution" as in
+      that of "specific creation in pairs." In both cases, we must insist upon
+      geneological consanguinity. For the chances of any two highly specialized
+      forms, originally starting on different lines of divergence, and
+      ultimately reaching individual identity, both in form and characteristics,
+      is an impossible problem in the determination of chances. Consequently,
+      Mr. Darwin finds the necessity of accounting for the presence of northern
+      forms in the southern hemisphere, and the reverse, just as great as in the
+      Linn&aelig;an theory, which was fully accepted by Cuvier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot15" id="foot15"></a>15. : Burdach, in his "<i>Trait&eacute;
+      Physiologie" (Trad. par Jourdan</i>. 1837) says: "Effectivement nous
+      rencontrons des traces de vie dans toute existence quelconque." This is as
+      broad a panspermic statement as can be made, and is only true of inorganic
+      matter so far as vegetable life is concerned, including such infusorial,
+      mycologic, and cryptogamic forms as may lie so near to the "force
+      vegetative" of Needham as to be indistinguishable from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot16" id="foot16"></a>16. : In the case of volcanic islands,
+      the upheavals were undoubtedly accompanied by deposits of mud, sand (ocean
+      detritus), marine vegetation, and more or less animal matter, and these
+      organic substances were washed down by the rains into the broken valleys
+      and plains below, when land vegetation almost immediately made its
+      appearance; not because seeds may have drifted thither by any of the
+      different agencies that have been mentioned, but because organic matter
+      can no more help bringing forth life in some form, when conditions favor,
+      than salt water, when exposed to evaporation, can help crystallizing into
+      its symmetrically-arranged salts. And the same would be true of all the
+      coral islands, bringing up the organic matter of the sea to the influence
+      of the light, the rains, and the dews. The islands thus formed in the
+      Pacific Ocean begin to exhibit vegetable life almost as soon as they make
+      their appearance above the reefs, and a line of sea-beach is formed about
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot17" id="foot17"></a>17. : These, while presenting the most
+      varied and diverse forms of infusorial life, are nevertheless the most
+      constant and abundant type. They abound more or less in all organic
+      infusions. Ehrenberg, however, holds that they are no more animal than
+      vegetal forms. They vary in length from 1/15000 to 1/2000 of an inch, and
+      are consequently too minute to be satisfactorily classified in respect to
+      all their diversified characteristics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot18" id="foot18"></a>18. : The extent of the southern ice-cap
+      may at least be approximately reached from explorations already made.
+      Capt. Weddell, in 1823, extended his explorations southward to within
+      about 15&deg; of the south pole, where he found an open sea. Capt. Ross,
+      in 1842, approached to within about 13&deg; of the same pole, without
+      serious obstruction. It is true that, in the following year, he
+      encountered ice barriers near the line of the antarctic circle, but they
+      were floating barriers coming down from Weddell's open sea. Capt. Wilkes,
+      in 1840, explored a considerable portion of the Antarctic Continent, lying
+      almost entirely within the antarctic circle. Other explorations have been
+      made, showing that the southern ice-cap does not probably extend,
+      continuously at least, much farther north than 78&deg; or 80&deg;, or to
+      within some ten or twelve degrees of the south pole, independently of the
+      packs of drifting ice in the otherwise open seas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot19" id="foot19"></a>19. : The truth or falsity of "Evolution"
+      depends entirely on the successful solution of this problem, for the
+      chances are quintillions to ones that no two identical forms could have
+      originated from different centres, or from the same centre on divergent
+      lines, and ever reached identically the same results. And how any two
+      forms should happen to be sexually paired, on the same or different lines
+      of divergence, is one of those inexplicable mysteries which must puzzle
+      Herbert Spencer in all his labyrinthian searches into "Force-correlation,"
+      "Differentiation," "the Dynamic Force of Molecules," etc., etc. However
+      successful he may be in other directions, he will inevitably fail in this.
+      We must fall back on the grand Old Bible genesis for the solution of this
+      difficulty, where every living thing was commanded to produce seed, or
+      multiply and replenish the waters and the earth with offspring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot20" id="foot20"></a>20. : These transcendental or ideal forms
+      may be said to correspond to the "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are
+      the eternal, immutable principles which are discernible to the eye of the
+      soul, as the sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of
+      the body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a higher
+      realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of which the
+      objective reality is but the shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot21" id="foot21"></a>21. : Herbert Spencer may be quoted as
+      authority on this point. He says: "There is invariably, and necessarily, a
+      conformity between the vital functions of any organism, and the <i>conditions</i>
+      in which it is placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a
+      certain range of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and
+      elevation." And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora,
+      each specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north
+      or south from the thermal equator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot22" id="foot22"></a>22. : Speaking of the ultimate principles
+      or elements of matter, Plato is quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with
+      modest diffidence, "God alone, and those whom he loves among men, know
+      what they are." It is only those who seek to eliminate God from the
+      universe that speak with confident flippancy on the subject of molecular
+      machinery and force-correlations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot23" id="foot23"></a>23. : As long as the evolutionists cannot
+      agree among themselves as to what constitutes the process of evolution, it
+      can hardly be expected that the public will accept their speculations as
+      conclusive inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to
+      the doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many
+      objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word
+      Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot24" id="foot24"></a>24. : "Know ye not that ye are the temple
+      of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot25" id="foot25"></a>25. : Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the
+      "Protoplasmic Theory of Life," says: "Matter cannot change its state of
+      motion or rest without the influence of some force from without. True
+      spontaneity of movement is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what
+      we call dead matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an
+      exciting cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial
+      impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this "force
+      from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle operating to effect
+      the otherwise impossible change in matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot26" id="foot26"></a>26. : A favorite set-phrase of Professor
+      Bastian in speaking of morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes
+      calls them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot27" id="foot27"></a>27. : That great and justly celebrated
+      naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of the universal origination of the lower
+      forms of animal life by a process termed, in his time, "spontaneous
+      generation," says: "There are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal
+      and vegetable, which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'mol&eacute;cules
+      organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a constant
+      succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for some time
+      associated with the Abb&eacute; Needham in his experiments in vital
+      directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by no means
+      certain that he did not accept the Abb&eacute;'s "force v&eacute;g&eacute;tative"
+      in place of his more materialistic views respecting "mol&eacute;cules
+      organiques." At all events, his statement that as many living things
+      appear in nature independently of reproducing causes as by successive
+      generation, is no doubt true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot28" id="foot28"></a>28. : M. Tr&eacute;viranus, who followed
+      Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask experimentations, first noticed
+      the important fact that the animalcul&aelig; appearing in different
+      organic infusions, depended on the nature and quality of the infusions
+      themselves, and that the changed conditions of the same infusion produced
+      new and independent forms of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot29" id="foot29"></a>29. : Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet,
+      says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin &eacute;toit la religion &eacute;ternelle
+      des Essences; parce que tout ce qui existe existoit comme de toute
+      &eacute;ternit&eacute; comme possible ou en id&eacute;e dans l'entendement
+      de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette v&eacute;rit&eacute; sublime en d'autres
+      termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute Eternit&eacute; dans
+      l'entendement du Supr&ecirc;me Architecte. Tou tes les parties de
+      l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome &eacute;toient deffin&eacute;s dans
+      ce plan. Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux diff&eacute;rentes
+      pieces de ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs repr&eacute;sentations.
+      Chaque etre y &eacute;toit figur&eacute; par ses characteres propres: et
+      l'acte par lequel la Souveraine Puissance a r&eacute;alis&eacute; ce plan,
+      est ce que nous nommons la Cr&eacute;ation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot30" id="foot30"></a>30. : Here is a fact given us by Dr. F.
+      Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a peat meadow in that town, owned by him,
+      which was at no time subject to overflow, a large quantity of peat had
+      been removed at different intervals of time, when the excavations
+      naturally filled with water. In these excavations there appeared not only
+      the <i>Cyprinidae</i> in considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which
+      grew to be as large as those in the most favored streams. They made their
+      appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and have
+      flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow were there
+      any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any other source of
+      water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot31" id="foot31"></a>31. : Professor Beale, in one of his very
+      latest works says: "Of the chemical and physical forms of energy something
+      is known, but of the relationship of the so called <i>vital</i> energy,
+      nothing has been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is
+      altogether different from that which has been traced to physical and
+      chemical energy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot32" id="foot32"></a>32. : It is admitted, even in the case of
+      <i>Bacteria</i>, whose movements are the most uniform, that they are
+      sometimes so inert and languid as to show no movements at all; while, at
+      other times, they exhibit mere Brownian movements or those no more nearly
+      allied to "life" than the minute particles of carbon escaping from the
+      flame of a kerosene lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists,
+      it is a question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most
+      active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in other
+      words, whether they are <i>Fungus-spores</i> or <i>Torula</i>-cells, or
+      whether they may not be some intermediate forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot33" id="foot33"></a>33. : The difficulty of assigning any
+      definitional value to a "primordial germ" is due to the vagueness of idea
+      attached to it in the popular mind, as well as to the diversified theories
+      and speculations of the scientists concerning the origin of life. We can
+      only define it as a "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest
+      conceivable quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical
+      unit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot34" id="foot34"></a>34. : Let two comrades be shot at the
+      same instant in battle, the one through the heart, and the other through
+      the arm, shattering it badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from
+      taking a piece of bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart
+      and instantly killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still
+      living? Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He
+      may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts might
+      still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the integrity of
+      the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply because the vital
+      principle that differentiates matter is gone--can no longer act. If the
+      integrity of the bone depended on the action of the molecules, and not on
+      the vital principle, there is no reason why this experiment should not be
+      a success. For the molecules are all there, and their action will not be
+      disturbed for hours after the death of the man shot through the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot35" id="foot35"></a>35. : It is safe to adhere to the
+      Leibnitzian axiom, <i>Natura non agit saltatim</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot36" id="foot36"></a>36. : One of the most cultured classes of
+      Christian believers in our day, holds that "all life is from the Lord;"
+      that "He is the fountain, and we only the streams thence." And this, they
+      claim, is true of all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to
+      cut off this stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the
+      fountain of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause
+      a mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their
+      intermediates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot37" id="foot37"></a>37. : Professor Marsh, of Yale College,
+      has predicted that the "missing link" will be found in Borneo--evidently
+      not crediting Mr. Stanley's statement about its presence in the interior
+      of Africa. But one "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an
+      extensive family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest
+      genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half cover
+      the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey and the man
+      being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the first half of the
+      chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions of links, so to speak.
+      How, then, is the greater length of the plexus to be covered by a single
+      "missing link?" A long line of caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore,
+      in Borneo, and shipped to the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous
+      stretch in the chain of animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for.
+      Borneo must be exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the
+      chasm between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal
+      inhabitants, of that island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot38" id="foot38"></a>38. : This daring hypothesis of the
+      materialists is so utterly repugnant to all our ideas of a perfected
+      Cosmos, that we have no patience with those advancing it. It is, at best,
+      speculation run mad, and is based on no other assumption than that of the
+      inherent imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God,
+      or from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast geognostic
+      epochs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility
+      inevitably runs into the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. For if, in the play
+      of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past time
+      has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting movements
+      and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite duration of time to
+      come can effect nothing but similarly mutual adjustments and
+      re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an infinity of time, space,
+      matter and motion, everywhere presenting a unity of phenomena in the
+      universe, "there can never be anything," according to the great Stagirite,
+      "unconnected or out of place, as in a bad tragedy." Conservation must,
+      therefore, be the rule, and desinence the impossible exception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact of
+      vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly appeared,
+      and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as suddenly disappeared,
+      to show that there are mighty disturbances in the sidereal heavens which
+      entirely negative the idea of "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the
+      phenomena of variable stars, with all their apparent irregularity of
+      motion and fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite
+      and well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of
+      extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of Tycho
+      Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the
+      interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty non-luminous
+      or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of light
+      and heat, as the attending planets revolve about the common centre of
+      gravity in our own system. And this is especially true of that vast and
+      fathomless star-stratum, called the Milky-way, in which most of these
+      peculiar phenomena occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable
+      transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no matter of
+      wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising that these
+      sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater frequency. This would
+      inevitably be the case if the planes of revolution, in the case of these
+      non-luminous bodies about their central orbs, were coincident with the
+      lines of vision from our own planet--a circumstance by no means improbable
+      from the vastness of the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of
+      stars marching therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be
+      accounted for in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their
+      apparent rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our
+      sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation Hercules at
+      the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of Arcturus' flight),
+      it is impossible to determine, in the present state of astronomical
+      knowledge, whether the apparent change of place in any star is real or
+      merely optical. But, in the case of double stars, each is travelling
+      (independently of its other motions) about the common centre of gravity
+      obtaining in its own system, and these relative movements may account for
+      the greater or less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one,
+      present a greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus
+      destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified in our
+      own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With stupendous
+      planetary systems revolving about each of these apparently double stars,
+      they must respectively have a revolution, real as well as apparent, about
+      their own centres of gravity--not one and the same centre, but different
+      and far distant centres. Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with
+      planes of movement at right angles with it, they would necessarily present
+      the appearance of one star revolving about the other--an <i>apparent</i>
+      motion only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of <i>temporary</i>
+      stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens, flaming up into
+      stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and then disappearing
+      altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or <i>apparent</i> stars,
+      was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its maximum brilliancy at the
+      very first, but gradually diminishing in size until the end of seventeen
+      months, when it disappeared, without change of place, from the heavens.
+      This temporary star was visible in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the
+      Milky-way, within whose swarm of stellar worlds most of these apparent
+      stars have made their appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for
+      this stellar phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed
+      and molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the
+      elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses
+      (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation of
+      "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is manifestly
+      too absurd for scientific recognition. A more satisfactory explanation may
+      be here suggested:--Supposing the apparent relative position of any six or
+      seven stars of the sixth magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed
+      by the combined motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as
+      to throw them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered
+      together as to show their several star-discs as one, we should
+      unquestionably have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as
+      long as this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after
+      another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the combined
+      motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from the first to the
+      second magnitude, and so on until it reached the sixth magnitude, when it
+      would pass beyond the reach of unaided human vision. But as the star of
+      Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at its fullest brilliancy, it may be
+      objected that this suggested theory fails to meet the required conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the
+      Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction of
+      stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a century.
+      We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded stars, in great
+      numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that these temporary stars
+      almost uniformly appear in that zone renders the suggestion here made
+      quite as rational, in the way of speculation at least, as that of "vapory
+      celestial matter" suddenly condensed into a star of the first magnitude,
+      as Sir. William Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not
+      probable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of stars,
+      lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various parts of the
+      heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance of a star of the
+      fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if more thickly clustered,
+      present that of a star of the first magnitude. But powerful telescopes
+      resolve them into a large number of stars, from the thirteenth to the
+      fifteenth magnitude. One such cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been
+      resolved into not less than fifteen hundred small stars of very low
+      magnitude, and pretty widely scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander
+      Von Humboldt, in speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that
+      "their disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any
+      diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces or in
+      their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too weak too
+      excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no longer see is not
+      necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same time the question of
+      Pliny--"<i>Stell&aelig; an obirent nascerenturve?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of these
+      stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There are, for
+      instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant clusters of stars,
+      dark granular spots, of greater or less magnitude, in which the most
+      powerful telescopes show no glints or traces of stars. They are among
+      Humboldt's smaller "fissures or chasms in the heavens," in which he
+      asserts that there is a great paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if
+      one of these thick stellar clusters, which show to the naked eye as a
+      single star, should, by the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system
+      and the stellar group in question, pass into the field of one of these
+      small rents or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of
+      the stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the
+      first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that magnitude
+      so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or fissure. It
+      would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in the clouds of a
+      dark night, and disappear as soon as it had traversed, or apparently
+      traversed, the rift in question. This galactic curtain, it should be borne
+      in mind, is made up of 18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less
+      than 720,000,000 dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective
+      centres of gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this
+      is unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of the
+      more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch, even in the
+      telescopic field, mere glints of light as the intervening swarms of
+      stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the foreground and shut out the
+      more distant view. It is only through these rents and fissures in this
+      great galactic curtain that the brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever
+      be seen; and these glints of far distant light, showing dimly through this
+      curtain, may account for the peculiar <i>milky</i> appearance of the
+      galaxy, arising from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams
+      themselves. It was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic
+      curtain that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its
+      appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained visible for
+      a period of seventeen months.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+Title: Life: Its True Genesis
+
+Author: R. W. Wright
+
+Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9307]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 19, 2003]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+i"?Life: Its True Genesis
+
+By R. W. Wright
+
+
+
+
+[Masoretic Hebrew.]--xOe squaredxx(C)OeOe1/2x" x-Oe.x"Oe deg.xcxx"Oe3/4x'Oexoe xcOe.xoeOe3/4x"OexOeOe'x"Oexcxf.--
+
+IYa1/2-- I"a1/2 IfIEuroa1/2 cubedII1/4I+- I+-a1/2I"I?a?| a1/4I1/2 I+-a1/2I"a?. II+-I"a1/2 deg. I cubeda1/2 cubedI1/2I?I, a1/4IEuroa1/2 I"a?I, I cubeda?I,. [Septuagint.]
+
+"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
+upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]
+
+Second Edition
+
+1884
+
+
+
+RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
+TO
+ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.
+OF CHESHIRE, CONN.
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Prefatory
+
+Chapter I.    Introductory.
+Chapter II.   Life--Its True Genesis.
+Chapter III.  Alternations of Forest Growths.
+Chapter IV.   The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+Chapter V.    Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+Chapter VI.   Distribution and Permanence of Species.
+Chapter VII.  What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+Chapter VIII. Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+Chapter IX.   Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+Chapter X.    Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.
+
+
+
+
+Preface to Second Edition.
+
+
+
+Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
+that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
+thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
+spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
+is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
+the tenth verse:
+
+"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
+thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (_the earth_) bring forth
+and bud (_not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth_), that it (_the
+earth_) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (_man being the
+only sower of seed and eater of bread_): so shall my Word be (_the Word of
+Life_) that goeth forth out of my mouth (_the mouth of the Lord_); it
+shall not return unto me void (_i.e., lifeless_), but it shall accomplish
+that which I (_the Lord Jehovah_) please, and it (_the living Word_) shall
+prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
+
+This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
+hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
+and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
+come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
+tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
+shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
+and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
+"Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
+nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
+conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
+by the divine fiat.
+
+In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
+this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
+In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
+Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
+history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
+volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
+flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
+on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
+and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
+vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
+as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
+the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
+There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
+in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
+remarkable formula is taken.
+
+We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
+as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
+instead of God, in their philosophical writings.
+
+As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after _Truth_ as it is to be
+found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of
+science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is
+only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no
+foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a
+lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing
+more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to
+accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner
+than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to
+others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following.
+But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with
+being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a
+scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.
+
+When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
+years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
+we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
+for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
+have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
+they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
+referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
+Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
+the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
+toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
+life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
+ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
+nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
+forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
+without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
+to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
+food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
+dead batrachian inside of one year.
+
+This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
+between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
+finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
+riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
+there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
+the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
+these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
+any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.
+
+The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
+Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
+and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
+boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
+force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
+characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
+sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
+the road-sides, and the _dA(C)bris_ scraped into the centre of the road-beds;
+the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside
+rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break
+the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones
+etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in
+length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that
+they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no
+trace of a mother toad in connection with them.
+
+The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
+early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
+propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
+they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
+any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
+circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
+in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
+appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
+is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
+by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
+made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
+Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
+sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
+taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
+the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.
+
+What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
+almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
+inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
+the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
+where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
+It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
+of the town.
+
+The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
+of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
+in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
+he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
+expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
+on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
+enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
+not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
+blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
+out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common _Rana_
+family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
+similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
+reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
+apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.
+
+Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet
+into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water
+secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as
+well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they
+wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog,
+originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would
+make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well
+enough as one of the _Rana_ family. It was only to our more intelligent
+neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we
+stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it
+appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are
+equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water
+from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm
+sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting.
+The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing
+their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young
+wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the
+open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch
+out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest
+study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the
+proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable
+modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the
+tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn
+months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to
+ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the
+development of this little pest of the _Culex_ family, independently of
+the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a
+little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the
+netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as
+every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated
+on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into
+a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly
+devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the
+full-fledged mosquito is reached.
+
+All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
+experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
+demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
+covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
+harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
+water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
+their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
+world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
+we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
+Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
+in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
+acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
+the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
+convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
+ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
+may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
+for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
+question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
+now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
+Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
+that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
+have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
+mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
+little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
+knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
+about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
+especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
+knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
+Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
+the same becoming courtesy.
+
+In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
+"Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
+more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.
+
+Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
+other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
+the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
+conspicuously in the historic page.
+
+When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
+frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
+operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
+us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
+batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
+highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
+that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
+earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
+vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
+in the beginning.
+
+One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
+scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
+have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
+diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
+centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
+environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
+living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
+thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
+their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
+pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
+went forth.
+
+As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
+life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
+Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural
+_habitat_ of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that
+the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the
+extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is
+manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the
+common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller
+mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,
+as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt
+sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long
+thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without
+the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped
+along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will
+be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and
+not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,
+locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale
+the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters
+from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that
+these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing
+conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes
+its appearance.
+
+There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
+another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
+from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
+nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
+the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
+appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
+previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
+than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
+bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
+will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
+not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
+dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
+of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
+acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
+out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
+and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
+months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
+specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.
+
+Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
+University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
+for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
+as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
+the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
+the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
+in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
+periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
+strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
+text; as, for instance, the _Trilobites_, occurring so abundantly in what
+is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance,
+whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil,
+characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much
+in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the
+presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of
+the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of
+these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long
+enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked
+the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest
+scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.
+
+All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
+governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "_similia
+similibus gignuntur_"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains
+universally. The _Graptolites_, occurring in the bituminous shales of the
+Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to
+which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of
+natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the
+fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible
+teaches us.
+
+When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
+minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
+Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
+rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
+great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
+induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
+he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
+several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
+be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
+Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.
+
+When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
+than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
+true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
+spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
+command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
+of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
+study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
+every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
+amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
+paper on the _ArchA|opterix_, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a
+case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing
+a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was
+trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every
+one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.
+
+It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
+not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
+have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
+the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
+strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
+upon the Matterhorn!
+
+Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
+be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
+the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
+of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
+least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
+themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
+that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
+the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
+mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
+"Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
+the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
+period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
+physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
+expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
+materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
+and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
+took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
+we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
+which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
+least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
+defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
+Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
+English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
+pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
+Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
+Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
+other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
+twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
+events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
+place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
+unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
+is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
+appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.
+
+When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
+of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
+of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
+institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
+know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
+command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
+not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
+of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
+power of life in matter.
+
+That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
+their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
+asserts they originally came from.
+
+And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
+thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
+earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
+changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
+energy intervene!
+
+"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
+our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
+material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
+his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
+the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
+word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
+sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
+purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
+light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
+with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
+millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!
+
+In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
+the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
+over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
+it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
+takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
+where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
+higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
+dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
+Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
+Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
+of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
+We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
+conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
+for good or for evil.
+
+We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
+our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
+doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
+at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to _The
+National Quarterly Review_, for the captious manner in which it treated us
+after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
+two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a
+class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and
+enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
+criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
+thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
+several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
+had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
+as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
+handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
+science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
+materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
+the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
+adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
+so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
+respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
+content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
+fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
+waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
+of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
+and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
+Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
+by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
+unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
+demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
+was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
+writer's own face.
+
+But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
+in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
+indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
+our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as _The National
+Quarterly Review_ speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
+friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.
+
+If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
+if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
+for them to regret, and for us to deplore.
+
+To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
+thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
+what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
+thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:
+
+  "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,
+  Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow
+  With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been
+  All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,
+  Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain
+  The long night through, and wake at early dawn
+  To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"
+
+R. W. Wright.
+
+West Cheshier, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+Prefatory.
+
+
+
+The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
+public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
+introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
+may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
+salutation untouched.
+
+The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
+traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
+and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
+conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: _That the
+primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
+things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
+they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions exist_.
+
+The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
+the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
+the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
+The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
+Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
+Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
+biblical and scientific scholar.
+
+In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
+that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
+named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
+we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
+imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
+into the same lines of incidence in human thought.
+
+Science has long taught that the _absence_ of necessary physiological
+conditions results everywhere in the _disappearance_ of vital phenomena;
+by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the _presence_ of
+these necessary conditions results everywhere in the _appearance_ of vital
+phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it
+is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after
+each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand
+years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved
+the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither
+sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have
+anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each
+yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life)
+was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its
+appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural
+seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.
+
+And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
+the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
+forests where pine have been cleared away, and _vice versa_, in some parts
+of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So
+with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
+over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
+glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
+find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
+without the possible intervention of natural seeds.
+
+The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
+Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
+years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
+undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
+century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
+roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
+them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
+of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
+the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
+points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
+subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.
+
+According to IrenA|us, this Greek version was rendered at the request of
+Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library,
+and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic
+scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed
+upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to
+our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most
+conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis
+of life" we derive therefrom.
+
+ILIEuroI-II1/4I+- (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical
+signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "_germ_ of anything,"
+or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives
+or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of
+"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no
+plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which
+seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more
+comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of
+life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used
+it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms
+IfIEuroI muII1/4I+-I"a?1/2II?a1/2 I cubedIOEI cubedI?I expressing "the _laws of generation contained in
+matter_"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual
+connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let
+the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
+yielding fruit after his kind, _whose germinal principle of life, each in
+itself after its kind, is upon the earth_"
+
+We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
+complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
+scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
+Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.
+
+But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
+The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
+rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
+development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
+do with the '_odium theologicum_?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both
+theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
+agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
+scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
+nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
+the Hebrew _Hagiographa_, of what less value is it to science than if it
+had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
+inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
+science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
+Herbert Spencer?
+
+Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
+all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
+longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
+operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
+speculation to pry. We know what nature _does_, or may know it by the
+proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
+than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
+the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
+science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
+without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
+an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
+tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
+land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
+bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
+as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
+endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
+requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
+oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
+primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
+organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
+gemmule, thousands of years ago.
+
+He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
+thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
+our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
+theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
+rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
+transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
+_molA(C)cules organiques_, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
+"life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulA|,
+with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
+or twenty years.
+
+Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
+speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
+and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
+motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
+the public. [1]
+
+R. W. Wright.
+
+West Cheshire, Conn.
+
+
+
+
+
+True Genesis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Introductory.
+
+
+
+It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
+speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
+tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
+utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
+conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
+prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
+current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
+rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
+more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
+speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
+have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
+substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
+persistent elements in the universe--_Matter_ and _Motion_. Everything
+else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else
+essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
+theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
+two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
+conclusions respecting matter.
+
+Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
+and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
+claim, of one and the same force in the universe--_Motion_, With the
+exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
+ever active and reactive agency.
+
+Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
+more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
+or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
+postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
+of molecules.
+
+Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
+Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
+unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
+stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
+special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
+transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
+exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
+its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
+because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
+averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+
+And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
+speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
+among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
+last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
+who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
+the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
+as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
+ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
+the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
+dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
+life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
+mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
+of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
+non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
+the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
+beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
+or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
+all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, _de
+novo_? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly
+allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied
+to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to
+provoke both incredulity and derision.
+
+The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
+professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
+as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
+most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
+of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
+and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
+enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
+laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
+putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
+cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
+dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
+mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
+the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
+nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
+nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
+conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.
+
+But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
+greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
+either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
+logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
+only a negative conclusion shall follow.
+
+"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.
+
+Life is neither matter nor motion,
+
+Therefore: Life is not indestructible.
+
+This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
+distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
+incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
+neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
+thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
+illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
+that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
+without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
+embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
+have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
+to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
+such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
+realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
+that this conscious _ego_--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes
+attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the
+order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we
+are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the
+theological conception of a God--the one supreme _Ego_ of the
+universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
+apprehensive intelligence, is derived.
+
+We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
+order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
+constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
+inductions:--
+
+1. Cause must exist before effect.
+
+2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preA"xisting as a cause, there
+can be no life-manifestation.
+
+3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.
+
+4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.
+
+5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
+an effect?
+
+6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
+both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
+incongruent and conflictive judgment.
+
+7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
+whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.
+
+8. Hence Life, either as a preA"xisting cause or vital agency, must precede
+both animal and vegetal organism.
+
+Again:--
+
+9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
+which is produced by an operating cause.
+
+10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
+as an operating cause.
+
+11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
+must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
+cause before there is any produced effect.
+
+12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.
+
+13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
+equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.
+
+And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
+be can no matter without an existing _ego_, in some state of consciousness
+in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what,
+therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion,
+except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as
+we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that
+"breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living
+soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.
+All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a
+rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once
+defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
+"materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
+them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
+both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
+potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
+consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
+which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
+existence.
+
+The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
+that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
+with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
+force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
+God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
+dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
+crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
+resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
+syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
+infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
+successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
+act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
+conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
+world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
+that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
+demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
+admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
+admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
+which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
+laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
+remain as they are.
+
+Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
+disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the _Hagiographa_, or "sacred
+writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar
+that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially
+in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and
+inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit
+utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that
+whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle,
+as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the
+latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and
+achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this
+statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more
+important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found
+that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much
+neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key that
+unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging
+between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will
+most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no
+equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
+volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
+be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
+value as in the first chapter of Genesis.
+
+In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
+translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--
+
+1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
+and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
+only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
+Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent
+system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally
+consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence
+"without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying
+inconceivably vast areas in space.
+
+2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
+suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
+of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
+evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
+epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
+"gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
+matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
+universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
+man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
+order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
+and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.
+
+3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
+the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
+great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
+rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
+stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
+for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
+firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
+Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.
+
+4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
+fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
+life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
+distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
+nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
+turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
+was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
+"guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
+this most remarkable genesis.
+
+5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
+which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
+explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
+either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
+and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
+law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
+in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
+would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
+Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
+ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."
+
+6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
+theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
+excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
+earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
+necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
+the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
+occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
+mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
+organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
+hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
+(except man) "after his kind."
+
+But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
+of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
+that of materialistic science:--
+
+THE BIBLE GENESIS.
+
+1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
+Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
+no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
+
+2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as _perfect_ of its
+kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs,"
+declared to be in themselves upon the earth.
+
+3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
+every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
+plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
+field "before it grew."
+
+4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
+bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
+therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
+firmament of heaven.
+
+5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
+every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
+which they appear in geological distribution.
+
+6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
+he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
+every other living creature.
+
+7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
+life," and he became a "living soul,"
+
+8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
+man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
+the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
+face of the earth.
+
+9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
+man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.
+
+10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
+the angels."
+
+
+THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.
+
+1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
+universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
+myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
+through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
+infinite duration of time to come.
+
+2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less
+_imperfect_ of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some
+underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual
+development from lower into higher organisms.
+
+3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
+agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
+its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
+at best, only a sort of _tertium quid_ between matter and motion.
+
+4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
+birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
+progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
+constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
+of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
+gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.
+
+5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
+creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
+constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
+organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
+genera, or species.
+
+6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
+respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
+up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
+until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.
+
+7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
+thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known
+moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the
+social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree
+only, not in kind.
+
+8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
+purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
+adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
+all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
+indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
+tiger, or they dominion over him.
+
+9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
+expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
+God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
+end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
+become endowed.
+
+10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
+than the apes!
+
+And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
+Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
+conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
+devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
+least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.
+
+But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
+as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
+represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
+implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
+_ZRA_, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis,
+from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica
+Sacra," first published in 1662:--"_Sparsit, asparsit, cum aspersione
+fudit, diffudit_," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally
+diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew
+word _ZRA_. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or
+tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which
+"seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.
+
+The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
+is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the
+"_diversa diversorum viventium primordia_" of Dr. William Harvey, were
+originally implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and
+biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught
+the doctrine expressed in his phrase "_omne vivum ex ovo_," but that of
+"primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
+in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
+more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
+receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
+into a living organism.
+
+The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
+vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
+from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
+unit--or whether it originates _de novo_, as the materialists assert, from
+infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
+particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
+hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
+certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
+basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
+indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
+be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
+hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
+necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
+effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
+conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
+trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
+rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
+materialistic dogma, _nihil ex nihilo_, would necessitate a like induction
+wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is
+manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
+seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
+the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.
+
+The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
+thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
+environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
+environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
+ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
+point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
+back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
+form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
+such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
+the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
+themselves.
+
+At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
+but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
+forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
+or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
+itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
+the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
+conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
+"primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
+whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
+everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
+new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
+wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
+point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
+knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
+theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
+a tiger in an Indian jungle.
+
+Teach us to know what nature _does_, not what she _is_; and whatever of
+"divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic
+"Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the
+"myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul
+of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors
+themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their
+inspiration.
+
+We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
+contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
+and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
+because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
+all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
+Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
+machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
+at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
+by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
+will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
+the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
+assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
+speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
+molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
+ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
+to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
+proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
+advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
+connection.
+
+The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
+growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
+seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
+forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
+domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
+never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
+our position, that the Bible Genesis contains _the true key to the mystery
+of life_. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be
+reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes
+of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as
+Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial
+bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more
+perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and
+the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the
+more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[3] The emphatic
+statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the
+earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below
+"specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement
+that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions
+favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the
+life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.
+
+And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
+thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
+there is functional activity; while a state, or _status_, is an incidence
+determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and
+its _status_--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first
+instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity
+dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply
+the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is
+begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very
+important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What
+this efficient cause _is_, is a question that awakens no responsive
+inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of
+consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it
+is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will
+ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them
+the first quantitive essence of life itself.
+
+We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
+life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
+their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
+founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
+the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
+_animus_ of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great
+central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual,
+eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all
+religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
+Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India.
+Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective
+blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely assailed and
+overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing
+and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the
+great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the
+slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration
+at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the
+dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room
+for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as
+"the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval
+mist," originally pervading the interplanetary spaces.
+
+We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
+Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
+experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
+purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
+the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
+after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
+investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
+against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
+whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
+"life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
+necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
+are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
+facts only, and the latter entirely on _pre_conceived and _pre_judicial
+notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
+objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
+the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
+themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
+potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
+must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
+theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
+God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
+heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
+of the universe:--
+
+  "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
+  Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
+
+The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
+science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
+household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
+more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
+dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
+for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
+represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
+the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
+industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
+number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
+gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
+controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
+statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
+scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
+has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
+achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
+
+Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
+science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
+this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
+materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
+why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
+of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
+slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
+more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
+Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
+to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
+refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
+man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
+
+When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
+much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
+Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
+between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
+and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
+primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
+whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
+arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
+shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
+thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
+maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
+span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
+no daring mortal could ever pass.
+
+Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
+necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
+construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
+"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
+as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
+would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
+continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
+the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
+manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
+advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
+of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
+organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
+foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
+either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
+this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
+variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
+substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
+differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
+re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
+exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
+potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
+abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
+and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
+
+The bridge will never be built.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Life--Its True Genesis.
+
+
+
+The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
+the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
+that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
+celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
+admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
+observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
+that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
+the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
+principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
+force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
+governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
+rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
+instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
+the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
+comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
+upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
+"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
+demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
+way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.
+
+In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
+fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
+the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
+streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
+along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
+wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
+life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
+flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
+spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[4] For like all living
+principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
+primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
+onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
+postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
+correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
+grand comprehensive _Datum_ on which all the objective, as well as
+subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
+upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
+"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
+"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
+Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
+raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
+and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.
+
+To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
+up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
+because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
+artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
+handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
+Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
+no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
+undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
+complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
+affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
+spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
+which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
+slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
+travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
+called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
+purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
+Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
+physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
+"Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
+action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
+that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
+as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
+were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
+field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
+opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."
+
+Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
+recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
+the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
+doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
+genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
+renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
+statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
+comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
+the command "to bring forth" was issued:--
+
+1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.
+
+2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, _the
+fowl of the air_.
+
+3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
+and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.
+
+4. _Let us make man in our own image_.
+
+And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
+with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
+Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
+This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
+paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
+crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
+the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
+post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
+life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
+the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
+writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
+origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
+geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
+written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
+Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the _Cosmos_ to escape him,
+would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
+was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
+and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.
+
+But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
+creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
+observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
+appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
+primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
+vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
+of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
+inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
+primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
+inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
+inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
+answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
+decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
+process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
+primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
+declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
+successfully entered upon by the AbbA(C) Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and
+others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
+co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
+established by inductive methods.
+
+_Nihil ex nihilo_ is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as _omne
+vivum ex vivo._ That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least
+considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some
+vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
+manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
+and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
+greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
+two of a physiological or vital unit? [5] At all events, it is as
+impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other.
+And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible
+Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly
+without verification or proof.
+
+But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
+the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
+of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
+there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
+vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
+way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
+Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
+vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
+command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
+what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
+Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
+before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
+did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
+conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
+years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
+genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
+metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
+which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
+contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
+should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
+other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
+of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
+science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
+credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
+disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
+interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
+the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
+is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
+conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
+it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
+disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
+distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
+disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
+supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
+formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
+incredibility.
+
+It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
+inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
+we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
+interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
+translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
+--contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
+"mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand _questio
+vexata_ of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of
+all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (_i.e._
+each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
+physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
+formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
+hitherto occurring upon our globe.
+
+Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
+Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
+experiments of the renowned AbbA(C) Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic
+assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by
+whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "_molecules
+organiques,_" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the
+_primordia viventium_ of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery"
+and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and
+Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever
+spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they
+all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible
+Genesis, _and all are explained by them._ We say _all_, with one exception
+only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this
+exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy
+vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He
+who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only
+a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And,
+breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, _he became a living soul_!
+
+Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
+without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
+chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
+Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
+yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
+defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
+so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
+awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
+primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
+myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
+the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
+Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because _you_ cannot
+annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
+compass of _your_ brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
+intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at _His_ sovereign and
+commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold
+of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit,
+and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words
+without knowledge."
+
+But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
+It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
+God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
+abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."
+
+What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
+power of God which operates (continuously operates) _to impart life to
+inanimate nature._[6] From the connection in which it here stands it means
+this, as in other connections it means the power which operates
+(continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like)
+in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving
+principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary,
+there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative
+now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor
+Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate
+nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its
+operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
+connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
+aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
+animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of
+mind.[7] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature,
+and a part not nature.
+
+Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the _ZRA_.
+the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
+thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
+own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
+commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
+forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
+first received its _baptism of life_ from God--in other words, derived the
+animating principle of life from the source of all Life.
+
+And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
+Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
+give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
+vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
+to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
+definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
+remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
+idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
+any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
+vegetal and animal life.
+
+St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturA| non quseritur
+miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
+Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
+that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
+for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediA|val authority.
+What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
+such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"
+however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
+our modern scientists.
+
+And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
+definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
+vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
+allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
+living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
+hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
+uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
+to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
+not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
+own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral _plexus_, and
+Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
+and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
+_a priori_ induction will ever extend this line _or plexus_ to man. The
+developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
+will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
+up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
+his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
+downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
+archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
+and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
+nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
+Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
+and woof of their scientific formulA| respecting life, will never stand
+before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
+thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
+against them.
+
+Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
+life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
+whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
+his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
+this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
+_genetrix omnium viventium_, or the living _mother_ on whose bosom he
+shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
+beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
+not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
+principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
+forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
+forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
+apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
+and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
+grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
+_gramma_ coveted by his favorite game.
+
+And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
+against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
+to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
+which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
+behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
+will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
+the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
+infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
+But how about the preA"xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
+megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
+period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
+did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
+and we will answer it.
+
+But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
+all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
+matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
+modifications, combinations, etc.,[9] chemically as well as molecularly
+considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a
+mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the
+argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some
+one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.
+
+For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
+etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
+statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
+well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
+some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
+plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
+materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
+conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
+as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
+must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
+some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
+number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
+molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
+possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
+infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
+cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
+occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
+follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
+or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
+Intelligence" of the universe.
+
+Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
+era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
+their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
+more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
+for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
+concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
+possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
+essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
+All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
+an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
+were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
+theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
+or the first fungus-spore. [10]
+
+All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
+both plants and animals have _disappeared_ from the earth for the want of
+the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished.
+What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that they
+originally _appeared_ from the presence of these identical conditions,
+whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have occurred? We put
+this question not simply because the Bible Genesis asserts that "_out of
+the ground_ made the Lord God to grow" every plant of the field "before it
+was in the earth," as well as every herb of the field "before it grew;"
+nor because it declares that their primordial germs are in the earth; nor
+because it speaks of the earth as containing within itself the "animating
+principle of life." But we put it on the irrefragable logic of the
+materialist's own premises and conclusions. They may use other and
+different physiological terms from what we should care to employ, but
+their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force," their "highly
+differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing more than what
+we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital conditions," etc. Their
+preference for the terms they employ, over essential "qualities" or
+"properties" of matter, is entirely due to the obvious invalidity of their
+conclusions, except as their physical theory of life may help them out of
+an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more convenient term on which to
+allege the _de novo_ origin of life--its spontaneous manifestation in
+their experimental flasks--than any vital principle primarily inhering in
+matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to
+validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious
+force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In
+other words, theirs is the fallacy of _non causa pro causa,_ or that
+vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause
+of vital manifestation, and fastens induction where none is legitimately
+inferable.
+
+Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
+that in all life-manifestations there must be some preA"xisting vital force
+or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can
+come into existence.[11] M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that
+organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to
+physical or chemical forces." The AbbA(C) Needham is satisfied to formulate a
+"force vA(C)getative," so far as plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably
+falls back on vital force or energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique,"
+which is essentially inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations.
+According to the latter, the whole universe is an "_organisme absolu_"
+constantly endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all
+conceivable directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
+interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
+theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
+is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
+distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
+For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
+from all vital manifestation.
+
+An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
+of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
+transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
+and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
+conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
+solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
+among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
+of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [12] which
+merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover,
+day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But
+this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's
+speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution
+theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his
+"archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature
+adheres to perfected forms.
+
+Goethe accepts the doctrine of _vis centripeta_, beyond the influence of
+which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or
+variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
+variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
+inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
+not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned _by_ circumstances
+_to_ circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to
+the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he
+frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We
+should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after the Great
+Architect's pattern, _to_ circumstances, and is only varied _by_
+circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of variability. For
+the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal pattern, after
+which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals has been
+fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose mind, or
+rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
+archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this
+_Archeus_ pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from
+the mind of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but
+from the one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all
+living things were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that
+world "which," according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that
+is contained sensibly in our world."
+
+This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
+influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
+modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
+types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
+way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
+nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
+then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
+attribute to nature a _purpose_ to modify persistent forms under a law
+that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
+archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
+intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
+type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
+therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
+or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
+predetermining will or agency in the universe.
+
+Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
+thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
+character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
+before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
+effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
+would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
+itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
+materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
+one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
+reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
+and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
+entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
+ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
+co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
+personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
+obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
+not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
+spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
+fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
+ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
+angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
+worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
+ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
+other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
+machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
+language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
+and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
+majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
+iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
+Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
+two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
+should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
+inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
+screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
+greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.
+
+But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
+science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
+the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
+or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
+words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
+manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Alternations of Forest Growths.
+
+
+
+No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
+alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
+apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
+wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
+been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
+their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
+ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
+satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
+phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
+these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
+scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
+ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
+And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
+of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
+only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
+these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
+lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
+noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
+Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
+question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
+any very important new facts given.
+
+If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
+think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
+collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
+ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
+ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
+implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
+silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
+remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
+themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
+that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
+of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
+further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
+the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
+waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
+with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
+11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
+specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
+this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
+by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
+but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
+and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
+determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
+genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.
+
+Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
+treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
+to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
+species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
+the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
+over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
+centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
+belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
+again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
+have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
+causes; but, in many instances, _this explanation is not probable_." It is
+manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this connection,
+in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed" any other
+germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits that, in many
+instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the dissemination of
+seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the exploded notion that
+vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous instances where seeds
+have grown after lying dormant for ages in the earth." He further says, in
+the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while
+they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he
+is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain
+for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that
+they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether.
+But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of
+ancient Egyptian cereals, which are sometimes hawked about the country for
+two and three dollars a seed, and, in the same breath, accept the absurder
+theory that seeds may lie dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and
+most enduring woods will utterly perish and disappear in a few brief
+years, is wholly inexplicable to us, except as an hypothesis to force a
+conclusion, or to account for the otherwise unaccountable alternations of
+forest growths.
+
+But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
+seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
+entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would
+be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and
+other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr.
+Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by
+actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and
+thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils
+below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach
+them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may
+answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a
+nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the
+indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a
+like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly
+be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light
+of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are
+speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed
+that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such
+exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast
+into the fire and consumed to ashes.
+
+But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
+the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
+brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
+entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
+in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
+remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
+calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
+and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
+rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
+burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
+found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
+Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
+waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
+which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
+Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
+Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
+depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
+must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
+brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
+wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
+did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
+species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
+us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
+microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
+any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
+examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
+large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
+But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
+the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
+seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
+this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
+newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
+is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
+sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.
+
+It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
+hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
+neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
+oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
+entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
+the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
+while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
+"germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
+growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
+in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
+natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
+the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
+natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
+"vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
+"the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
+has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
+instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
+implicitly followed since.
+
+In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
+York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
+Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
+growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
+ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
+the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
+trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
+poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
+spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
+tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
+fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
+replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
+supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
+not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
+altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
+tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
+and growth.
+
+The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
+communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
+fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
+1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
+oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
+propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
+too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
+special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
+immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
+natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."
+
+In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
+storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
+was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
+that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
+"had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
+prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
+neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
+nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
+promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
+unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
+season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.
+
+In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
+the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
+before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
+alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and
+through forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was
+possible that their seeds could have been derived. One of these
+tornadoes the writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South
+Alabama, and he is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that
+the instances are rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean
+path of a tornado, through any of our primitive forests, has been
+succeeded by the same growth of timber as that borne down by the winds.
+Where the path of this ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine
+forest, a clean growth of oak was buttressed on either side by pine;
+and _vice versa_, where it swept an oak forest. And it is certain that
+the tornado, whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such
+discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine
+growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific
+theory or balk an unscientific one.
+
+Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
+years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
+was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
+been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
+had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
+taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
+deciduous, and _vice versa._ We have any number of well authenticated
+facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
+place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.
+
+Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
+which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
+swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
+without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (_Larix Americana_) may
+be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by
+the balsam fir (_Abies balsamea_), which may be probably caused by the
+partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree
+that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a
+period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
+extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
+state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
+manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
+soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
+accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
+for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
+that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
+considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
+granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
+in the interest of speculative parties.
+
+But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
+found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
+country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
+swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
+artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
+appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
+latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
+the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
+for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
+in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
+growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
+the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
+growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
+favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
+swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
+nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
+the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
+all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
+Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
+all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
+the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
+of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
+Bible genesis nowhere affirms.
+
+Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
+Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
+dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
+the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
+evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
+growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
+"seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
+stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
+the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
+genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
+locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
+his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
+conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.
+
+He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
+practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
+philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
+rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
+fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
+adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
+by an oak forest, _where there were a few oaks previously scattered
+through the woods to furnish seed._" This is a very cautious, as well as
+circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had
+his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor
+Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through
+the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into
+account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one.
+They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a
+proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His
+anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a
+pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify
+him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement
+as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of
+Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have
+found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the
+intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the
+localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have
+been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the
+shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No
+squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get hickory nuts, and
+few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and thinner-shelled walnuts
+are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is provident, but no more so
+than he is fastidious in the choice of his food. He never plants acorns
+except for his own gratification, and is never gratified with indifferent
+food so long as he can command that which is to his liking.
+
+In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
+necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
+inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
+indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
+fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
+correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded _by a
+spontaneous growth of trees of another kind._" In the sense in which he
+manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
+might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
+that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
+seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the _Acer_ family
+excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
+a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
+chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
+A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
+accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
+tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
+nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
+generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
+we advance in this work.
+
+Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
+unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
+operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
+adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
+in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
+called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
+almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
+Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
+is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
+spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
+mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
+following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
+places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
+etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
+expressed at the asking of the question."
+
+These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
+Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
+for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
+conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
+They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
+the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
+"spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
+with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
+meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
+conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
+trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
+lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
+facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
+presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
+to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
+distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
+native forest from which seed could have been derived.
+
+Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
+town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
+had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
+"yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, _where there was not a
+single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the
+place_." Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white
+pine, of which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory."
+He is greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
+readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
+by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
+Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
+them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
+caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
+might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
+grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
+provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
+locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
+have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
+and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
+Bible genesis.
+
+While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
+imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
+cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
+within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
+vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
+any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
+at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
+and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
+germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
+that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
+nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
+inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
+years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
+so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
+hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
+old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
+stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
+were laid.
+
+Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
+few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
+well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
+which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
+vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
+on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago
+(_circiter_ 1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding
+region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my
+grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It
+contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As
+the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this
+ground there sprang up a grove of white pines, covering the field and
+retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a
+single oak or chestnut tree;" and he adds, "_there was not a single pine
+whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to
+have been planted on this spot_." He supposes, however, that the "seeds"
+(pine cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought
+them up "within the limits of vegetation."
+
+As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
+that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
+and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
+forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
+covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
+Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
+the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
+idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
+with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
+time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
+fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
+oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
+many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
+the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
+succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
+hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
+that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
+intervals among the larger deciduous trees.
+
+Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
+that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
+gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
+once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
+where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
+which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
+of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
+different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps,
+_vice versa_. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a
+brief summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of
+the country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less
+well-informed on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says
+that in the region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871,
+"dense growths of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing
+rapidly;" but he omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to
+state the previous growths of timber, or whether there were any
+neighboring growths of poplar along the track of the burnt district from
+which seed might have been derived.
+
+Here are some of his more important statements:--
+
+"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
+up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."
+
+"At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
+deciduous trees, and _vice versa_."
+
+"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
+oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."
+
+"In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."
+
+"In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
+maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
+more of the last named than any other."
+
+This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
+simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
+that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
+"Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
+really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
+suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
+surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
+the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
+neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
+forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
+physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
+proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
+be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
+countries of Europe.
+
+It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
+New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
+the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
+pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
+without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
+absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
+soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
+ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
+and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
+the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
+often see a hazel coppice; after a time the cratA|gus, and finally the
+oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
+aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
+the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
+of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.
+
+He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
+timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
+from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
+Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
+wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
+immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
+noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
+very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
+pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
+produce nothing but poplars, _where none of that species of tree was
+previously to be found"_. But facts of a similar character are too
+numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
+authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
+germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
+appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
+them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
+passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
+circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
+plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
+occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
+physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.
+
+There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
+a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
+forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
+areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
+yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
+the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
+ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
+after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
+been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
+whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
+tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
+forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
+indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
+specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
+genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
+others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
+theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
+growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
+confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
+scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
+pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
+effectually turned on the sneerer.
+
+Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
+singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
+appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
+which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
+this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
+disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
+value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
+were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
+earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
+And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
+conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
+were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
+units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
+circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
+all candid and impartial readers will agree.
+
+Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
+theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
+that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
+meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
+position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
+to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
+little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
+will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
+had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
+hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
+vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
+is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
+only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed,
+_but twelve species of plants _ (not including grasses and sedges)
+flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."
+
+The attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
+meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
+by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
+in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
+their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
+fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
+soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
+of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
+their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
+changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
+England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
+the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
+open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
+aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
+for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
+seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
+beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
+for their more successful growth.
+
+No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
+centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
+obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
+bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
+obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
+she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
+eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
+guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But
+forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up
+in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages,
+or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the
+butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
+dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
+all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
+mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
+to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
+mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
+her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
+command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
+expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
+implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
+seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
+them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
+that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
+language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--
+
+      "Nature never lends
+  The smallest scruple of her excellence,
+  But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
+  Herself the glory of a creditor--
+  _Both thanks and use_."
+
+Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
+of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
+never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
+glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
+seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
+bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
+and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
+legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
+breast, and her "copy is eterne."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+
+
+
+Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
+of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
+place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
+unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
+trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
+insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
+plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
+explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
+small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
+which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
+provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
+these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
+in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
+coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
+may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
+plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
+until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
+scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
+to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
+have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
+when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
+vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
+conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
+fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
+
+This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we
+have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific
+path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on
+vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our
+cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the
+"ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in
+which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all
+their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are
+the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of
+storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of
+storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed
+back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it
+may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself.
+For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much
+more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned
+to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it
+quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from
+the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed
+mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.
+
+The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
+nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
+thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
+the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
+belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
+former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
+to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
+least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
+their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
+these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
+after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
+fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
+circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
+had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
+merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
+when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
+no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
+exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
+protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
+whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
+chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
+Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
+
+Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
+Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
+remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
+admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
+on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
+he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
+implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
+wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
+"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
+says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
+which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
+the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
+or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
+for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
+exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
+with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
+show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
+dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
+erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
+may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
+than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
+dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
+this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
+erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
+household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
+they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they _do_
+follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
+
+The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
+"Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
+indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
+extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
+after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
+Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
+together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
+at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
+lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
+connected with the case was, that _the raspberry seeds were recovered from
+the stomach_ (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society,
+where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
+circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
+provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
+the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
+conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
+would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
+
+But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
+comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
+years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
+raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
+Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
+kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
+were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
+one." This statement must be received _cum grano_. The Romans never used
+coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a
+battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
+was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
+taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
+might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
+soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
+very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
+particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
+the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
+posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
+for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
+that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
+recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
+the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
+well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
+in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
+
+All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
+about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
+record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
+stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
+seeds, as well as the _obolus_ in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be
+found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had
+withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the
+surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have
+obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for
+belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
+
+From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
+mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
+England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
+of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
+not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
+case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
+distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
+discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
+tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
+soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
+"Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
+there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
+buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
+other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
+wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
+wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
+trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
+or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
+bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
+of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
+seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
+of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
+
+Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
+alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
+fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
+circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
+the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is _Erechthites
+hieracifolia_, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its
+seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is
+not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds,
+and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
+survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
+burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
+any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
+heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
+of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
+no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
+their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
+seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
+those _grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
+southern hemisphere_, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in
+which they so promptly make their appearance.
+
+Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
+deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
+heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
+growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
+the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
+two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
+from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
+to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
+only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
+a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
+must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
+its place.
+
+The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
+nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of
+the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil
+where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but
+from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those
+taking advantage of environing conditions, just as _Bacteria_ or
+_Torultz_ spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots
+of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring
+directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living
+organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable
+depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the
+burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when
+there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from
+the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken
+their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural
+"gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account
+for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick
+bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in
+this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when
+white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds
+of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing
+in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any
+length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that
+when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are
+effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie
+grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and
+the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No
+seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found
+had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most
+powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make
+their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation
+did on the earth, not from seed, but from preA"xisting vital units or
+primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
+necessary conditions for their development and growth.
+
+The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
+explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
+to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
+no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
+generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
+seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
+impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
+seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
+thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
+eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
+gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
+the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
+gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
+utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
+corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
+involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
+power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
+seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
+natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
+macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
+gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
+pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
+gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
+outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
+passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
+pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
+appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
+observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
+slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
+the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
+
+The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
+they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
+hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
+the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
+small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
+and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
+some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
+otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
+even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
+bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
+length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
+have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
+character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
+mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
+comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
+have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
+crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
+crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
+fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
+bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
+
+These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
+Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
+chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
+than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
+digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
+"natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
+"the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
+loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
+of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
+relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
+without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
+transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
+number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
+of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
+as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
+
+Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
+other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
+have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
+mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
+dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
+this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
+agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
+well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
+given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
+or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
+seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
+late civil war, a little leguminous plant (_Lespedeza striata_) sprang
+up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it
+came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of
+the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage
+plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this
+plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the
+phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities
+in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general
+appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not
+particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one
+southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they
+naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in
+those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not
+abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had
+the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive
+legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
+
+It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
+suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
+as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
+been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
+southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
+prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
+to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
+and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
+South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
+it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
+thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
+war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
+vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
+in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
+South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
+Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
+states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
+winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
+quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
+wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
+plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
+favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
+organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
+their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
+on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
+examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
+the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
+life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
+have named.
+
+This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
+"conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
+soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates,"
+"_molecules organiques_," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
+life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
+theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
+developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
+dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
+conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
+of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
+only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
+"molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
+from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
+two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
+with matter--_molar_ motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass,
+and _molecular_ motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its
+unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
+
+But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
+collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
+mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
+accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
+other words, it is simply a _process_ or _mode_ of action, and stands in
+about the same relation to matter as _growth_ does to a living plant or
+tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
+subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
+indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
+additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
+"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
+it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
+it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
+motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
+both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
+less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
+having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
+moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
+matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
+co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
+physical hypothesis of life.
+
+But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
+local fern (_Schizoea pusilla_) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
+affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
+of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
+at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
+ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
+ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
+Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
+south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
+north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
+appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
+thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
+the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
+half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
+will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
+of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
+known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
+not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
+hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
+vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
+high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
+another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
+respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
+the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
+mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
+governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
+manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
+globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
+appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for _Bacteria_ in
+the blood, _TorulA|_ in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological
+cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable
+"unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant
+forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of
+centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of
+affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis,
+because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but
+let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational
+life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force,"
+or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable
+to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they
+absurdly use these terms.
+
+It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
+question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
+seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
+theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
+east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
+respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
+this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
+the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
+changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
+theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
+directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
+plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
+"war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
+relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
+and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
+causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
+mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
+habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
+reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
+vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
+common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
+must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
+compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
+conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
+shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
+vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
+been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
+climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
+localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
+growth of local vegetations.
+
+And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
+seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
+regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
+these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
+vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
+units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
+determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
+resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
+seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
+as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
+given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
+not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
+chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
+likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
+any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
+of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
+soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
+judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
+failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
+experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
+subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
+less useful to man.
+
+But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
+As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
+nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
+out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
+of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
+no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
+life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
+inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
+fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
+they _might_ produce life _de novo_.[13] But the most daring physicist
+would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his
+knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to
+"molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon
+such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.
+
+It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
+in the appearance and geographical distribution of _fungi_, as universally
+obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it
+may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between
+certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive
+manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in
+assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
+fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
+classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
+as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
+other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
+necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
+essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
+Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
+obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
+form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
+make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
+them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
+about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
+necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
+development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
+burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
+to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
+commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
+part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
+
+Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
+moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
+which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
+found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
+certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
+of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
+their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
+from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
+nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
+from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
+grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
+disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
+and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
+disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
+mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
+develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
+To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
+different species of _Mucor_, for instance--for disgusting offal over
+decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
+degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
+creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
+
+We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
+testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
+etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
+of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
+spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
+go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
+apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
+depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
+beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
+select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
+the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
+direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
+conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
+environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
+atmosphere--the "_pater omnipotens Ather_" of Virgil, "descending into the
+bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great
+himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things
+of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that
+myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a
+cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the
+poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father Ather," and the earth as
+his "joyous spouse." But life, with its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and
+swift," has reached its highest conceptions in the mind of the poet, not
+in the speculations of the scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from
+many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a
+Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass,
+staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a
+Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of
+"molecular machinery" by the scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its
+manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe
+of all-potential matter and motion!
+
+Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
+spores of the large puff-ball (_Lycoperdon giganteum_), as well as those
+of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose methods
+of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced artificially. But
+the process by which their production is thus effected, is more properly a
+natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says
+(quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and
+fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse
+of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue
+productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they
+cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these cases, but the
+conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded by the branches
+of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became favorable for the
+development of truffle "germs," and they made their appearance just as
+mushrooms do in caves and other places, where artificial beds are made and
+chemically balanced for their development and growth. And the reason why
+they disappeared, after a period of ten or fifteen years, was simply
+because the proper nutriment of the soil was exhausted, and not in
+consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the growing trees. One
+uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of this much-coveted
+fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions obtain, they
+_appear_, and wherever these conditions fail, they _disappear_,
+notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
+soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
+truffle (_Tuber A|stivum_) appears under beech trees, another form (_Tuber
+macrosporum_) under oak trees, and still a third form (_Tuber brumale_)
+under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change in soil
+conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among oaks,
+produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
+amounting to a specific difference in variety.
+
+The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
+one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
+horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
+cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
+over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
+time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
+ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
+governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
+whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
+In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
+come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
+its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
+the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
+as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
+Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
+in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
+seen by the required telescope.
+
+Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
+says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
+dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
+plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
+early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
+summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
+the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
+to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
+of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
+were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
+era. These primordial germs, or the _ZRA_ of the Bible genesis, must have
+preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
+spore-bearing cryptogam.
+
+M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
+great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
+at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
+oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
+conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
+oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
+All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
+connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
+the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
+all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
+development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
+fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
+connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
+case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
+remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
+micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
+parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
+from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
+parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
+occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
+than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
+springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
+spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
+endowed from the beginning.
+
+But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
+seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
+could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
+produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
+distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
+stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the _first_
+fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
+divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
+mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
+we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
+comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
+depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
+of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
+condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, _Nature_, as we
+half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
+solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
+ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
+radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
+baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
+idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
+choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
+field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
+her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
+breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
+proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
+life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
+soul-endowed man.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+
+
+
+Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S.
+etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of
+Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856,
+on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding
+Food," are the following:--
+
+1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its
+absolute creation, of which we know nothing.
+
+2. "But we assume each species to have been _created but once in time and
+in place_, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own law of
+reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws
+external to it.[14]
+
+3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate,
+since _any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but always
+fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc_.,
+
+4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates
+distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the
+heating rays."
+
+There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average
+rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in
+the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the
+hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several
+localities in which the different species of vegetation make their
+appearance.
+
+But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific
+creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount
+value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and
+restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from
+the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs.
+"Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or
+restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to
+doubt that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now,
+in nature.
+
+The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created
+at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds,
+is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or
+scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an
+experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first
+bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste
+over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants
+peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance,
+not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have
+nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because
+a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from
+the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we
+have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man,
+artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of
+plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did
+millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of
+these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or
+circumstances.
+
+But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of
+progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified
+offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original
+ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical
+faith, but never of experimental proof. "_Entia non sunt multiplicanda
+prA|ter necessitatem_" is an old and well-approved maxim, applicable alike
+to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the innumerable
+crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is produced
+without the necessary conditions on which its production depends.
+"Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest
+meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course
+of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and
+animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements.
+As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of
+development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without
+which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological
+sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and
+inevitably produced.[15] And this law is just as dependent on necessary
+vital conditions as vital manifestations are dependent on a physiological
+law. There must always be this reciprocal dependence and relationship
+between conditioning causes and effects. Whenever and wherever the
+necessary vital conditions exist, the physiological law takes effect, and
+the requisite vital manifestation is witnessed. And this is no doubt as
+true of animal as of vegetable life.
+
+The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of
+which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora.
+Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;
+
+  1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from  0A deg. to 15A deg..
+  2. " Tropical       "      "         " 15A deg. "  23A deg..
+  3. " Sub-tropical   "      "         " 23A deg. "  34A deg..
+  4. " Warm Temperate "      "         " 34A deg. "  45A deg..
+  5. " Cold           "      "         " 45A deg. "  58A deg..
+  6. " Sub-arctic     "      "         " 58A deg. "  66A deg..
+  7. " Arctic         "      "         " 66A deg. "  72A deg..
+  8. " Polar          "      "         " 72A deg. "  82A deg..
+
+These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with
+reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like
+division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems,
+extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our
+equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at
+their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they
+respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the
+next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we
+ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak
+of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the
+elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm
+temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all
+latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.
+
+They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant
+life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted
+for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances,
+modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the
+highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight
+exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that
+the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should
+hereafter be extended.
+
+Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation
+quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical
+mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate
+zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer
+classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are
+marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey
+gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant
+zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of
+plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind
+can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these
+statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the
+different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of
+vegetation peculiar to each of them.
+
+The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance
+in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein,
+and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could
+only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other
+conditions of that extensive zone.
+
+The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are
+characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while
+retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less
+rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are
+peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and
+most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do
+not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in
+both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain
+systems within the equatorial regions.
+
+The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and
+general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc.,
+exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a
+greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery
+and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels,
+and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these
+zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.
+
+The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of
+the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the
+other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and
+plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the
+corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of
+deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths,
+cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked
+characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent
+grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more
+extensively into varieties.
+
+The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm
+temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency
+is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are
+more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also
+abundant in grasses.
+
+The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social
+conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe
+and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is
+sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering
+herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.
+
+The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation
+generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.
+
+The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be
+entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most
+extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire
+vegetation.
+
+There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting
+plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the
+elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may
+appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.
+
+From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested
+on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before
+answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions _have_
+been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the
+distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on
+climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and
+isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one
+important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that
+of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but
+once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of
+its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences
+of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original
+plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and
+that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts
+of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones
+where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they
+attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than
+satisfactory.
+
+The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as
+reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray,
+in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work
+Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he
+was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not
+take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication,
+the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the
+individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."
+
+And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his
+associate's observations, in considering the very point here under
+consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his
+idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in
+individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in
+discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view
+is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with
+the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of
+accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or
+animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their
+appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and
+under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.
+
+Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions
+favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these
+conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its
+appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but
+simply the presence of "conditions"--the _pro_vision of man harmonizing
+with the _pre_vision of nature. In the same way the "Japan clover" made
+its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over the southern
+states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of plants, but
+the presence of natural conditions.[16]
+
+The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be
+arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general
+facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly
+to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and
+not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast
+intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others
+would require us to believe. Take the case of the _Schizoea pusilla_ of
+the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing in
+similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their
+antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this
+plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long
+time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that
+it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to
+New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these
+"specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would
+have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both
+localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored;
+and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the
+fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formulA|,
+must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite
+child of nature" that she condescended to create it _twice_ "in time and
+place," instead of only _once_. It is a poor rule, they may say, that has
+no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.
+
+Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief
+in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more
+rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high
+authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine
+currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have
+played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even
+across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the
+appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of
+miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than
+the presence of _Bacteria_ or _TorulA|_[17] in different organic
+infusions? If the vital units of these _infusoriA|_, are present in
+experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually admits, why may not
+the vital germs or units of this _Schizoea pusilla_ have made their
+appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand and New Jersey, at
+the same or different periods of time? If Professor Gray regards the
+microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical forms in
+inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of nature,
+then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove that
+these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which she
+has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the
+question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of
+argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly
+operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation
+not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and
+hence not supernatural.
+
+But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are
+led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the
+sub-arctic zone, and _vice-versa,_ and even beyond the equator to the
+sub-antarctic zone, and still _vice versa_. Before proceeding to consider
+the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called glacial
+periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or considering
+the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state their position
+in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and concisely as we know
+how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the generally accepted one
+of the evolutionists, as well as most of the present scientific world. As
+the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet theory of evolution depended
+on the satisfactory solution of this vexed problem, it became necessary
+for him to give his best and entire mental energies to the gigantic task
+which was, by universal consent, assigned him. The reader shall see how
+admirably the thermal equator is crossed by Mr. Darwin, with his vast
+swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and other plants, forest trees,
+anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild animals, such as would
+gladden the heart of the "great American showman" beyond the most
+extravagant comparison.
+
+The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve,
+was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and
+cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the
+corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was
+any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of
+how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will
+give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be
+charged with misrepresentation.
+
+He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and
+more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions;
+and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of
+the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the
+equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot
+lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and
+sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this
+period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres
+gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living
+on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former
+homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms
+returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms
+would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if
+sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms
+on the mountains of Europe.
+
+"In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its
+turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere
+rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the
+equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the
+mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These
+latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes,
+leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with
+them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their
+mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the
+same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of
+the intermediate tropical regions."
+
+We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for
+plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us
+in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure,
+even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.
+
+But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the
+strength of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr.
+Darwin must rest:--
+
+1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial
+epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however
+few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the
+maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.
+
+2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the
+sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a
+constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface,
+being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion
+or perihelion.
+
+3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the
+earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any
+glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not
+altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time,
+and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to
+the other.
+
+4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends
+continuously and permanently much farther north than 80A deg. or 81A deg.. Mt.
+Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only a
+few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was
+traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some
+ten or twelve degrees further north. [18]
+
+5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75A deg.,
+what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the
+north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope,
+below 60A deg., a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The utmost
+limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time,"
+conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to
+55A deg., or about the northern boundary of England.
+
+Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes
+of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further
+south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the
+sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking
+of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an
+ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that
+the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to
+the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a
+moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during
+the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this
+continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude.
+Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only
+push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm
+temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the
+Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of
+Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.
+
+Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less,
+when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the
+isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been
+the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape
+the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have
+flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the
+Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded
+through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation,
+that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our
+northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.
+
+For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern
+ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll
+has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms
+down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme
+northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have
+managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent
+habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent?
+Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it
+ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible
+of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only
+to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these
+forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern
+hemisphere.
+
+They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more
+before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that
+distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly
+in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been
+constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must
+accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period
+indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them.
+Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the
+line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more
+years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican
+states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled
+Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central
+American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a
+point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the
+northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the
+universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's
+calculations.
+
+To have accomplished this grand glaciatorial feat the North Pole must have
+donned some twenty times the amount of ice now about both poles of the
+earth, and so changed the earth's centre of gravity as to have inundated
+every foot of land on its habitable surface. But if this terrible
+catastrophy had been avoided, and some of our extreme northern forms had
+forced their way through the Isthmus into the lowlands of Columbia, they
+must have done so at their greatest possible peril, even if they had
+reached the base of Old Mt. Tolima in advance of the thermal equator, now
+fleeing in dismay before the southern Ice-monarch, with all his
+isochimenal hosts in mad pursuit of their invaders. And if these
+adventurous northern forms had succeeded in ascending Mt. Tolima, they
+could never have got down again, with the assistance of forty glaciations.
+
+But we can imagine Mr. Darwin promptly snatching his pen to show the
+stupidity of these northern forms in not climbing Popocatepetl or some
+other lofty mountain in Central America or Mexico, on their retreat before
+the still advancing thermal equator. But how this would have helped them
+to cross the geographical equator, we fail to see. When Mr. Darwin, and
+the eminent corps of geologists and physicists accepting his solution of
+this "vexed question," can make a "warm term" south _succeed_ a "cold
+term" north, we shall have no difficulty in solving the problem ourself.
+But, unfortunately, the two terms--the cold one north and the warm one
+south--are simultaneous in occurrence, and the same causes which forced
+these northern invaders into the tropics, when they followed _after_ the
+thermal equator, would have driven them ignominously back again _before_
+it. The climbing of mountains would only have prolonged their disaster.
+For after the glaciation north comes the glaciation south, and unless our
+cold temperate zone were pushed down beyond the geographical equator, none
+of its living forms could ever have reached the corresponding zone in the
+southern hemisphere.
+
+But as this "migration theory" is one of paramount importance to modern
+science, and especially to "Darwinism," [19] distinctively so called, let
+us, at the risk of repetition and tediousness, propose a scientific
+expedition for the better solution of this problem. To do this, we propose
+to cut loose from our stupid predecessors, the plants and animals, and
+invite Mr. Darwin and some of his more distinguished European
+contemporaries, not omitting Professors Gray, Winchell, Yeomans, and some
+few other American admirers of his, to accompany us on a fresh expedition
+from the warm and cold temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south, _purely in the interest of science_. To make it certain that the
+time fixed upon for this "expedition" to start, will not escape their
+attention, we will state what many of them already well know, that the
+present eccentricity of the earth's orbit is very low, being only 0.0168,
+and that, in the year of our Lord 851,800, it will reach its next superior
+limit, with a few intervening oscillations of such minimum value as to
+render it hardly worth our while to start before that time.
+
+We shall be obliged, of course to invite our distinguished European party
+to join us on this side of the Atlantic, as their own narrow and
+contracted continent furnishes no proper field for determining the problem
+in question. We shall insist upon one condition only: "_That they shall
+never leave the warm temperate zone in which we shall set out on our
+expedition, except to pass halfway into an adjoining zone as is the habit,
+at times, with plants and animals_." This condition will have to be
+rigidly observed, otherwise our expedition would be of no scientific value
+to future generations. As we shall have plenty of time to provide the
+necessary outfit, we will appoint Mr. Darwin purveyor-general of the
+party, and hold him responsible for any misadventure.
+
+We will arrange for the expedition to start in the early autumn of the
+year of our Lord 831,800, or about twenty thousand years before the earth
+shall reach its next superior limit of eccentricity,--all of us eager, of
+course, to brave the climatic vicissitudes of the journey, and to solve
+the "great problem of the ages," which is, to determine how the gigantic
+elephantoids of the Eocene period managed to cross the thermal equator,
+and pass into the present arctic regions of our globe.
+
+As "the king never dies," so the old southern Ice-monarch will be
+succeeded by the young northern one, at about the period named. We shall
+then have a decided advantage over our predecessors, the plants and
+animals, in their journey southward, since we shall know the exact route
+they took, and need only follow it. Presumably they had no such
+information, nor had they either chart or compass to guide them,--a
+circumstance which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently taken into account in
+predicating intelligence of his favorite pedestrians. Besides, these
+vegetal and animal forms had one difficulty to encounter which we shall
+not experience. With all the northern forms driven down into the Central
+American states, they must have been sadly crowded for room, especially
+near the Isthmus. The social conifers must have monopolized all the more
+favored sites on the mountain sides and tops, while the humbler denizens
+of the forest must have contented themselves with still more limited
+quarters. The more impatient animals, for lack of necessary forage, must
+have crowded through the Isthmus only to be driven back by the tropical
+heats to their proper isotherms.
+
+But our warm temperate zone is now moving southward, and our scientific
+expedition is moving with it. The northern Ice-monarch has resumed
+absolute sway, and our aphelion distance from the sun has increased some
+tens millions of miles. We have, in the mean time, moved down to the line
+of the Gulf states, and are deploying to the right in order to make a
+triumphant entry into Mexico. Mr. Darwin is daily consulting the
+isochimenals, and is confident that our northern ice-cap will equal Mr.
+Croll's highest expectations. The news finally reaches us that the Gulf
+stream has turned its course southward, and is now pouring its immense
+treasures of heat into the South Atlantic, if not turning the African
+"horn" and washing the far-off Australian coast. This fact greatly
+increases the enthusiasm of our European party, and they hasten forward
+into the sub-tropical zone, almost "violating conditions" in their haste
+to enter the tropics.
+
+At length, we crowd the narrow passages of the Isthmus, and the glory of a
+warm temperate climate bursts upon our view in the Columbian states, of
+South America. _The expedition promises to be an entire success_. At
+least, Mr. Darwin thinks so, and he is now the Sir Oracle of our party. We
+deliberately enter the lowlands of Columbia, and make ready to ascend the
+sub-tropical mountains--those formerly equatorial--where the "great
+scientific problem of the ages" is to be demonstrated. But we are
+measuring time by almost _Sirius_ distances, and vast geologic periods
+sweep by without apparent record. The northern ice-cap has been a
+prodigious one, crowding us nearly down to the geographical equator, with
+the advantage we have of appropriating some five and half degrees of the
+sub-tropical zone.
+
+But the year Anno Domini 851,800 finally rolls round, and the maximum of
+the earth's ice-cap is reached. Old Mt. Tolima looms up in the distance,
+and we soon ascertain that its height is sufficient for all scientific
+purposes. Its summit displays a glittering ice-cap, and we are certain to
+find the proper isotherm by climbing its umbrageous sides. We accordingly
+make haste to reach its base, and get there not a minute too soon; for the
+young southern Ice-monarch has stolen a march on the thermal equator, and
+is driving it irresistibly back to its old quarters. His march northward
+is a continuous triumph and ovation up to 55A deg., and the heart of Patagonia
+is made glad by his near approach. True, the white gates of commerce are
+closed about the Horn; but that is no concern of these wild Patagonians.
+The aggressive Britton is driven out of New Zealand, and that is another
+source of joy to the savage breast. Tasmania would extend a gladder
+welcome than all to the Ice-crowned monarch, but alas, not a drop of
+Tasmanian blood runs in human veins! Cape Good Hope has now a sub-arctic
+climate, and the heart of the wild Kaffir and Zulu rejoices that the
+sceptre of "perfidious Albion" is broken.
+
+The thermal equator at length reaches the base of Mt. Tolima, and hastens
+northward to the Isthmus, and thence to Hondurus and New Guatemala, where,
+by sheer force of exhaustion, it comes to a halt.
+
+But, as the equatorial zone extends fifteen degrees both ways from the
+thermal equator, its southern limit now rests on the geographical equator,
+and accordingly encircles the base of our "mount of refuge." We are now up
+this mountain some sixteen thousand feet above the equatorial lowlands,
+with the sub-tropical, tropical, and equatorial zones between us and the
+possibility of our further migration southward, without violating the
+express conditions imposed at the outset of our expedition.
+
+The fact soon stares us in the face that we have been no more successful,
+in our efforts to cross the thermal equator and pass into high southern
+latitudes, than the stupid plants and animals before us; and Mr Darwin's
+faith in high mountains springing from equatorial lowlands, disappears in
+jest and derision as we all good-humoredly agree "to break conditions,"
+and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and
+New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve
+itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness,
+hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great
+commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of
+exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The
+Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by
+us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the _Herald_, of the
+date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific
+expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "_The Great Wild-Goose
+Chase after the Thermal Equator_"--presenting one of the most humorous
+bits of sensational pleasantry ever given to the American public.
+
+But an apology is due the staider reader for the seeming levity of this
+narrative adventure. The exposition of Mr. Darwin, though widely accepted
+on both sides of the Atlantic by the scientific world, has seemed to us
+too trivial for serious reply. If we have leaped over vast periods of
+time, it makes no difference with the argument. So long as the thermal
+equator, or more properly the equatorial zone, or any part of it, lies
+between the warm or cold temperate forms, whether plants or animals, and
+their point of destination in the southern hemisphere, they can never
+migrate thither, any more than the right whale of the arctic seas can swim
+the equatorial oceans. Nothing is gained by going out of the way to climb
+mountains, except to hopelessly retard the return of both plants and
+animals to their native zones. If we have not demonstrated this fact to
+the reader's fullest comprehension, it will be useless for him ever to
+write a Q.E.D. at the end of any proposition.
+
+It is true that some eminent astronomers and physicists hesitate to
+accept the theory that these glacial epochs are due to the eccentricity
+of the earth's orbit. But the argument favoring it is well fortified and
+ably advanced, and if we add to the astronomical considerations involved,
+the physical proofs of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, caused
+by the excessive accumulation of ice about either pole, and the probable
+shifting of the Gulf stream to a southerly direction during the glacial
+period north, it is difficult to resist the conviction that the real
+cause of glaciation has been suggested in this theory. With all the ice
+now accumulated about the south pole transferred to the north pole, it
+would make an ice-cap of over thirty miles in thickness at the pole, and
+one sloping in all directions southward to about 60A deg.. This accumulation,
+it is claimed, would so change the earth's centre of gravity as to cause
+all the equatorial warm waters to flow southward instead of northward, as
+they now do.
+
+This would certainly seem to be a most wonderful provision of nature, as
+well as one strongly calculated to impress the human mind with the belief
+that an Infinite _Pre_vision lies behind all possible _pro_vision, whether
+witnessed in the heavens or in the earth, in astronomical or physical
+phenomena. Everywhere we see infinite perfection, combined with infinite
+beneficence, in the adaptation of means to ends. Nothing runs to
+waste--all things are conserved for use.
+
+But in all the outspoken grandeur of the universe, there is nothing so
+grand, in exhibition at least, as the simple faith of a child, that "He
+who watereth the hills from his chambers," and "causeth the day-spring to
+know his place," will watch over the trustful little sleeper during the
+darkness and silence of the night.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+The Distribution and Premanence of Species.
+
+
+
+Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the
+advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while
+remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones,
+says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United
+States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--_i.e._ Eastern North
+America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference apart, we
+find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our
+distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe,
+thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general
+physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and
+other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all
+the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great
+similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the
+astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity,
+had it been found to exist.
+
+Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
+plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
+zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
+different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
+and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
+therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
+known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
+all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
+Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
+alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
+States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
+Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
+pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
+correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
+same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
+of all the mountain systems of the globe.
+
+These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
+geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
+objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
+friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
+climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
+that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
+ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
+"coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
+insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
+bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
+the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
+the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
+mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
+as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
+Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
+attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
+hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
+seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
+
+When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon
+these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There
+is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the
+rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the
+lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and
+far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away
+from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be
+chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if
+all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have
+been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross
+the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions
+of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and
+explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of
+plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.
+
+The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the
+explanation wanted. It explains not only _why_ these alpine flora appear
+where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also explains
+all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the foregoing
+chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the earth
+responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine harebell
+is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it wears. And
+so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads and
+sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never grew
+before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang therein
+"its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the black alder
+will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far its current
+may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the supply of
+natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate her as
+"instinct with music and _the vital spark_."
+
+If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of
+nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert
+that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her
+grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find
+out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to
+accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with
+our chronic neglect of what nature _does_, is the great scientific
+stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that
+certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from the
+_absence_ of "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the
+reverse of this undeniable proposition, and agree that the _presence_ of
+necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their
+appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal
+law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the
+universe itself?
+
+For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical
+distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British
+Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As
+early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in
+his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in
+connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of
+the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution;
+while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in
+his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in
+Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our
+botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense
+plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have
+given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed
+vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and
+scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of
+any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to
+question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the
+array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon
+the audacious questioner.
+
+But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any
+longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or
+fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never
+meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well
+in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without
+knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many
+superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and
+diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough
+daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice
+them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the
+more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the
+truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional
+grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out
+the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole
+business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a
+delight instead of a burden.
+
+But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown,
+or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come
+from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms
+come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical
+rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent,
+for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that
+all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is
+dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now
+only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his
+"necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all
+animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial
+conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine
+Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in
+the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may
+appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds,
+fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about
+100A deg. C., and that _Bacteria, TorulA|_, and other infusorial forms, making
+their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from morphological
+cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital organism, but
+from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere present in the
+organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth into life whenever
+the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper incidences of
+environment occur.
+
+We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring
+forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as
+unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to
+such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary
+telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north,
+or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions
+occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a
+country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in
+which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the
+general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees
+peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in
+the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution
+of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to
+latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall,
+soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.
+
+But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for
+the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing,
+if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data
+for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the
+evolutionists have been spinning for us.
+
+Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials,
+more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year.
+We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only
+to find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we
+advance, or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our
+vast mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas
+thoroughfared and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits
+signs of becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in
+her demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of
+facts as the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future
+recognition. She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is
+likely to become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due
+to her methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out
+her hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to
+return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to
+adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna
+and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all
+indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of
+time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in
+character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to
+require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production
+and reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn
+her species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power
+above her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was
+brought forth."
+
+From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and
+wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to
+the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached
+out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as
+avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized
+forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so
+remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may
+be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties
+of the _Sequoia_, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs, poplars,
+hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions during
+the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown on the
+spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain
+undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a
+warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized
+forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively
+showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have
+worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in
+genetic value.
+
+There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical
+forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm
+inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial
+periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the
+earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formulA|, we can have no
+conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period
+named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest
+glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there
+have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can
+be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening
+maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It
+is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible
+glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who
+differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any
+other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his
+theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an
+interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and
+nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the
+present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have
+undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it
+require to work out even _one_ of Mr. Darwin's many evolutional changes?
+
+The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora
+and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be
+distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the
+varieties of the _Sequoia_ family, the oaks, beeches, firs, hazelnuts,
+etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be difficult to
+classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they cannot be
+placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled out of
+representative types. But why should our speculative botanists insist upon
+these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative forms" of
+which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has given us
+the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be claimed is
+that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions of years
+ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not
+repugnant, alliances, can produce
+
+            --"Streak'd gillyflowers,
+  Which some call nature's bastards."
+
+it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her
+alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of
+propagation. If she produced the _Sequoia gigantea_, or the great redwood
+tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous period, she
+has propagated it ever since according to her own loving methods, and it
+is idle to talk of the _Sequoia Langsdorfii_ as being the original
+ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of the sequoias.
+How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz that these
+trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in
+individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can
+never bear the fruit of the other.
+
+Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of the
+_Quercus_ or oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of
+ingenuity to show that the various members of this old and
+ancestrally-knotty family have all descended from two or three of the
+hardier varieties. He arrives at this conclusion from a geographical
+survey of what he would call the "whole field of distribution," and
+"the probable historical connection between these congeneric species."
+But science should deal with as few probabilities as possible,
+especially where experience furnishes no guide to certainty, and only
+the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never predicate
+probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some
+likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or
+otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we
+determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so
+much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in
+the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be
+absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a
+determinate judgment. The _Quercus robur_ may furnish the maximum test
+to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other
+variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M.
+De Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than
+twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded
+to be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long
+as the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one
+twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to
+determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished
+in the past.
+
+Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other,
+M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has
+governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has
+only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still
+speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may
+show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed
+to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because
+they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from
+the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like
+engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity
+of _idea_, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of the
+_individuorum similium_ in Jessieu's definition of species. But similarity
+must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere exists in
+nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the rarest
+possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million will be
+found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees of the
+same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and branching
+of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated covering,
+_Et sic de similibus_ everywhere, and with respect to every thing. Nature
+is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of similarity and
+tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the Platonic
+conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only a
+supplementary truth to that of _de similibus_. In the eye of the soul all
+objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as
+consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material
+universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[20] into
+the smallest possible number of similar or identical forms, may be all
+well enough to accomplish scientific classification; but the productive
+power of nature can never be limited by these mental processes of our own.
+
+The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently
+enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in
+speaking of the _Quercus robur_ and its probable origin, says that it is
+"traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks
+eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant
+shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest
+descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the
+Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats
+on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after
+the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The
+spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia
+was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring
+subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of
+the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which
+spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when
+conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no
+difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical
+conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the
+speculative botanist.
+
+Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they
+"have come into existence coincident both in time and place with
+preA"xisting closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as
+individual localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of
+original progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily
+determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species
+preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place,
+their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by preA"xistence.
+The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the
+appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a
+closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is
+lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to
+progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species
+preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than
+the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of
+observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic
+connection between the different species, or between even the same
+species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that
+advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization
+depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the
+dispersion of seeds.
+
+The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not
+depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of
+specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the
+possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of
+conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually
+concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection
+with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual
+distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of
+preceding conditions." [21] And he is forced to this conclusion by his
+virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged means of
+seed-distribution.
+
+The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and
+animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what
+they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can
+any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis,
+which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what
+forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is
+impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of
+thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel
+wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we
+make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties
+existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they
+were brought about by artificial processes.
+
+These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been
+practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in
+nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the
+distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend
+towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from
+other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies,
+resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens
+and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of
+species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced
+by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving
+tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of
+man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the
+category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In
+view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such
+as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders,
+tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard
+Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea
+of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the
+result of man's agency.
+
+Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to
+undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists
+and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among
+individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the
+absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the
+fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary
+limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These
+differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the
+question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature,
+rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new
+races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than
+certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease.
+But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to
+origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.
+
+The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the
+oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the
+Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that
+no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three
+million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million
+years, except that the _Sequoia gigantea_ may drop out, from the vandalism
+of man or the next glacial drift.
+
+M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique A(C)n Norwege," says "that each
+species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has its
+own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric
+gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture
+and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the
+physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary
+hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the
+point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without
+the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There
+was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth
+than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first
+instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.
+
+Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense
+of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees
+of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography,
+climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and
+tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that
+institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with
+a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern
+forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which,
+though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their
+leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be
+distinctly understood, is no alteration _produced_ by climate. Trees are
+made for and not _by_ climate, and they keep their characteristics
+throughout their whole range, which with some extends through a great
+variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we suppose he means
+by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and sub-arctic.
+
+In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of
+the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United
+States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and
+extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important
+elements--in fact, the _most_ important--is wanting in the tables before
+us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of specimens were
+obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have occurred, although
+it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He had his materials to
+work upon, and may have done the best that any one could with them. And
+yet it is just as important to know at what _elevation_ a particular tree
+grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes from a sub-arctic
+or sub-tropical region.
+
+But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with
+most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and
+trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other
+in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward
+from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We
+have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief,
+if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional
+grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He
+wants it distinctly understood that trees are made _for_, and not _by_,
+climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a
+localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by
+climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved
+throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and
+migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it
+would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or
+the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us
+neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the
+climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during
+their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.
+
+With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is
+undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made."
+They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring
+them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow
+now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of
+the ground made the Lord God _to grow_" every plant of the field, and
+every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the
+want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions,
+the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and
+growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest
+extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the
+climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees
+modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true
+physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearance
+_in_ climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without
+material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor.
+_Why_ they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we
+assume a preA"xisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our
+subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth to
+bring them forth, after _his_ spirit (the animating soul of life) had
+moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of the
+earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more
+comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the
+perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled.
+Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that
+it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human
+soul. Besides, we find _it true in fact_, since the earth is constantly
+teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law impressed
+upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--
+
+              "If this faith fail,
+  The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,
+  And earth's base built on stubble."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+
+
+
+The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human
+reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to
+determine. It furnishes no objective _datum_ on which to predicate
+attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as
+the coordination of the _vis vitae_ in nature, which is an undisguised
+form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes
+as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It
+admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical
+proposition. To say of life that it is "a coArdination of action," might
+be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise,
+crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an
+illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication,
+analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and
+apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process
+of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and
+uniformity of expression, in designating as a _power, property, force_,
+etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and
+profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one
+answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of
+all life in the universe.
+
+Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases,
+borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "_Jupiter est genitor_,"
+"_Jupiter est quodcunque vivit_," etc., which, although uninspired
+utterances, strike their roots deeply into the _terra incognita_ of
+consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a
+paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman
+defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted,"
+he was as conclusively indulging in the _argumentum in circulo_ as if he
+had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as
+luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of
+Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement _x-y_ the antithesis of _x+y_--one
+of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed
+in the formula.
+
+To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the
+argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing
+enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in
+logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real
+definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of
+reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular
+phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern
+materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the
+"potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated
+differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the
+part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a
+whimsical enough way of putting it.
+
+According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full
+of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But
+this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once
+received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it
+is idle to predicate the _vis vitae_. For the great bulk of our globe is
+made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which
+neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the
+slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or
+plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the
+world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the
+chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the
+principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In
+whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in
+respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of
+empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems,
+than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward
+survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond
+this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to
+which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.
+
+The theory of "panspermism," originating with the AbbA(C) Spallanzani in
+modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few
+others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the
+inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its
+elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing
+germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller
+than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond
+the construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that
+the germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the
+earth, or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to
+bring forth."
+
+Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything
+which exists is referable to the _vis vitA|_--to non-corporeal, yet
+extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's
+bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with
+a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of
+the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory
+so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible,
+ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the
+entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of
+elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes
+with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it
+is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely
+numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm:
+everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own
+spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a
+germ, the totality of things."
+
+But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of
+being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism"
+landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living
+things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they
+make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature
+still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that
+this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable
+experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis
+of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent
+materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm
+rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in
+this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a
+scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely
+fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great
+advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena
+occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now.
+It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the
+panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so
+deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation
+in these directions.[22] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least
+conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope,
+any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by
+the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a
+scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena,
+and satisfactorily accounts for them all, whether it originally came from
+Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a matter of comparatively slight
+moment, so far as the scientific world is concerned. At least, it would
+seem so to us. But to talk of the _de novo_ origin of "living matter" as
+the result of the dynamic force of molecules--themselves concessively
+"dead matter"--is to indulge in quite as fanciful a speculation as the
+advocates of the panspermic hypothesis have ever ventured to suggest.
+Professor Bastian is forced to go back of his infusorial forms and
+fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from which he admits they are
+"evolved." But why evolved? Does not the principle of vitality lie back of
+the pellicle, as well as the fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he
+that the extremest verge of microscopic investigation has been attained,
+in what he is pleased to designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is
+a very potential word, and no one may yet know what boundless stores of
+absurd theory and metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![23] He admits
+that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can have
+nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic
+organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise
+into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin,
+that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in
+and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both
+animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in,
+or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution,"
+for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the
+developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree,
+lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or
+the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this
+developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of
+ancestry to be traced anywhere.
+
+This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the
+Darwinian _plexus_ squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen and
+TrA(C)viranus agree that the infusoria met with have never presented similar
+characters when they have been encountered in different infusions; nor
+have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different portions of it
+have been _exposed to the incidence of different conditions_. The
+slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the materials employed,
+are invariably accompanied by the appearance of different organisms--these
+being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and unaccompanied by any of the
+familiar forms." Other writers of equal eminence in this field of
+investigation have not only observed the same characteristics, but
+encountered the same difficulties in classification, from the very great
+diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms. So great is this
+diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that little certainty
+or value can be attached to the classifications already made. Even
+Professor O.F. MA1/4ller, after he had convinced himself that he had
+discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a single
+genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut them all
+down to mere modifications of one and the same species.
+
+We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of
+emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of
+different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The
+presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically
+averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of
+"conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital
+phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the
+mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of
+any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected,
+it will produce _some_ form of life; not because it contains this or that
+morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100A deg. C--that to which
+it is experimentally subjected before microscopic examination,--but
+because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the required heat-test
+or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible by heat as by
+glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the proper
+conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in either the
+quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion, is, as these
+eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the appearance of
+different forms of life, just as the slightest change in soil-conditions,
+such as that produced by the presence of one species of tree with another
+in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the appearance of another and
+altogether different plant, as well as truffle tuber.
+
+But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to
+combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we
+refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its
+complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme
+simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in
+the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is
+formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements
+that take place _in invisible colloidal molecules_--a process which is
+essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived from
+lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded
+definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a
+hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all
+materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no
+such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed.
+There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resulting
+_from_, not _in_, the _vis vitA|_, or the elementary principle of life in
+nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in abundance. This
+materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as a generic one
+even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed that the
+"proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of Professor
+Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. MA1/4ller, the "bioplast" of Professor Beale,
+etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in name. They are
+mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which exhibit the first
+active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size from the one
+hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second of an inch in
+diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks of
+semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous
+layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they
+were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder
+supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is
+the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the
+plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the
+first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome
+of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on
+earth.[24]
+
+But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter,
+any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move,
+pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs
+with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the
+microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as
+essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or
+megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper
+response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the
+marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or
+classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter,
+we can never predicate _vitality_ of it, any more than we can predicate
+_intellectuality_. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater
+incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter." These
+qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature, not
+to insensate matter. To assert that life results _from_ "certain
+combinations and rearrangements of matter," and not _in_ them, is utterly
+to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them together
+that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an object of
+perception. Without the _vis vitA|_, or some germinal principle of life,
+lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of matter," and
+determining the movements of their constituent molecules, there could be
+no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a correlate of a
+force without the actual existence of the force itself. [25]
+
+The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive
+structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living
+organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is
+endowed with the property or power of producing life _de novo_, or, as
+Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living matter"
+which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but whether they
+die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and more potentially
+endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those following their diagnoses
+to determine. They further claim that the same law of vital manifestation
+obtains in organic solutions as in the structureless mass they call
+"protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed with the same potentiality of
+originating life independently of vital units, or _de novo_, as they more
+persistently phrase it. But why speak of _unfolding_ "new-born specks of
+living matter?" "To unfold" means to open the folds of something--to turn
+them back, get at the processes of their _infoldment_. It implies a
+pre-existing something, inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a
+germ, what is this pre-existing vital something which their language
+implies? Is our scientific technology so destitute of definitional
+accuracy that they cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without
+committing half that number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born
+specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by
+sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian,
+should trip in this definitional way.
+
+"Living matter," _born_ of what? Certainly not of _dead_ matter. Death
+quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the grave.
+It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of matter in
+which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly ceased, if,
+indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use language
+with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter," whatever the
+phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken nothing. The
+pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is there any birth
+from unquickened matter. Animals _bear_ young, trees _bear_ fruit, but
+force _produces_ results. What then quickens protoplasmic matter? Neither
+vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are to credit the materialists.
+They would scorn to postulate such a theory, or accept any such absurd
+remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is rather "molecular force"--a
+physical, not a vital unit--that gives us these "new-born specks of living
+matter." [26] This is what they would all assert at once, in their
+enthusiasm to enlighten us on a new terminology.
+
+But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the
+subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic
+force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in
+the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived.
+And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond
+microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of
+either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than
+that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is
+going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence
+adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living
+organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one
+is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this
+subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his
+antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and
+deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of
+molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole
+controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the
+visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated
+sky-mist" beyond it.
+
+All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic
+matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain
+forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life:
+But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher,
+more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether
+unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital
+unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These
+primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the
+microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains
+as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative
+hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist
+is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any
+advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and
+the other the synthetic method.
+
+This is the materialistic argument covering the _de novo_ origin of living
+organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they assert, that
+these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or vital units,
+than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is, come from
+pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is overlooking all
+generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of action. Crystals
+are inorganic matter which _form_, do not _grow_. They are mere
+symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are produced by some
+law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of their
+constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no beginning
+or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric solids, they
+remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic, not
+functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of
+crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us.
+Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation,
+not of mere aggregation.
+
+But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the
+materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still
+insist, between the preA"xisting germs of crystals and plants--or the only
+difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles of
+matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing diversified
+forms and structural changes than the more highly favored vital particles,
+such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the plastide, etc. The one
+represents mere crystallizable matter, the other the more complex
+colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of producing a much
+greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they concede, end here. But
+the difference is world-wide when we come to processes--the true
+experimental test in all classification. Crystallizable substances
+_crystallize_--that is all. They pass into a fixed and immovable state,
+and mostly into one as enduring as adamant; while colloidal or albuminoid
+matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no fixed forms--only those that
+are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so marked a feature, in respect
+to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the
+more distinctive name of "ephemeromorphs," in place of _infusoria_. But
+all these primordial forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with
+a solitary crystal. Everywhere the statical unit _forms_, the dynamical
+unit _grows_; the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one
+solidifies, the other opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the
+embrace of eternal silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and
+makes nature resonant with praise.
+
+Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain
+microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo
+in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental
+tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of algA|. They attribute
+their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation of
+filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the
+latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes
+constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic
+tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of
+molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary
+conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or
+appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating
+either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these
+materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this
+connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in
+which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals,
+in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living
+organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular
+formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would
+expect to encounter from them.
+
+M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that
+he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms)
+_at will_, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably
+true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as to _his_
+(M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field
+with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to
+do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to
+plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, and
+_vice versa_, then he might be said to have produced corn _at will_. And
+so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce
+one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by
+any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life
+in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that
+without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as
+complete in one form as another,--
+
+  "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
+  As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."
+
+All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the
+production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of
+nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing
+chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental
+flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the
+action of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and
+if he studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much
+the laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.
+
+Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls
+"new-born specks of living matter" are produced _de novo_, that is,
+independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life
+implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life
+with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as
+plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively
+shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks.
+But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal
+under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by
+experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one.
+His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk about
+_de novo_ production is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were it
+possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed, seed,
+underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with just as
+diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the gigantic
+conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance again, and
+some plants might drop out of the local flora; but the _Pater omnipotens
+Ather_ of Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the
+earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body, in all the
+prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[27]
+
+But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the
+right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are
+anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they
+resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks,
+they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in
+saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more
+satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even
+Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they
+thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in
+countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his
+accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the
+experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is
+a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital
+unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat.
+Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of
+such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is,
+that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy
+and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific
+explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs"
+primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions,
+and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But
+in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip
+in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.
+
+The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it
+conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural
+forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or
+inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system
+presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms
+of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular
+crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will
+forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine
+Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change
+itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from
+eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living
+types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless
+crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In
+this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline
+argument of the materialists has its value.
+
+The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of
+their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting
+statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions
+that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living
+organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions,
+nor should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the
+validity of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If
+they insist upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a
+crystalline "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they
+are effectually estopped from denying the presence of vital units in
+dynamical aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction
+that the process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one
+case, eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn
+round and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and
+certain, but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms.
+If vital units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units,
+statical units, and morphological units, should fall into the same
+categories of judgment.
+
+A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists
+and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in
+attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by
+his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases
+necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "_the
+continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations_." This
+definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of
+Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the
+phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them,
+fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any
+other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious
+formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand on it, but only
+in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all living things,
+are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number of little boxes,
+one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of all contains the
+germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was hardly a legitimate
+characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of "continuous
+adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box adjusted to the
+external relations of another. The definition is really that of a piece of
+working machinery--any working machinery--and was designed to cover Mr.
+Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by molecular force.
+
+But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations
+to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the
+upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration
+of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely
+external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its
+external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of
+causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the
+characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the
+distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its
+hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and
+electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all
+showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or
+relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life,"
+according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an
+automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to
+external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor
+Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these
+automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment
+of their internal to their external relations is continuous.
+
+The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" encouraged Professor
+Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: "Life," he
+says, "is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of
+growing by selection and interstitial appropriation of new matter (what
+new matter?) which then assumes similar qualities, of continually varying
+in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M),
+and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions
+of its own substance."
+
+It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this
+definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best
+aid him by grammatically analyzing its structure. And,
+
+1. "Life is capable of growing." We are glad to know this. As a vitalist
+it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back
+seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We
+let its "unstable collocation" pass for what it is worth, and stick to our
+grammatical analysis.
+
+2. "Life grows--is capable of doing something." This assurance positively
+encourages us.
+
+3. "It grows by selection and interstitial appropriation." This is still
+more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we
+feel, is increasing in potentiality.
+
+4. "By appropriation it enables _new matter to assume similar qualities
+to old matter_." This makes us more confident than ever; we take another
+step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is getting to
+be almost a "potentiated potentiality," to adopt the style of
+materialistic phrases.
+
+5. "It causes matter _to continually vary in composition._" Bravo! we
+unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most
+comforting assurance. Life is assuredly getting the upperhand of
+Matter (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere "undiscovered correlate
+of motion"--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with
+it--throws it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more
+steps forward.
+
+6. "Life is capable of self-multiplication"--has almost a creative
+faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of "bravoes," and,
+stepping boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to "throw
+up the sponge," take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new
+definition of "life."
+
+But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his
+own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that
+all these attempts to define life as a non-entity only, tend to keep up
+the demoralizing idea that it is an actual entity. We entirely agree with
+him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the
+definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees
+this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on
+Ephemeromorphs: "Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of
+which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively
+useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and,
+what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an
+independent entity."
+
+It may be objected that our grammatical analysis of the professor's
+definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should
+cover a "living thing," and not "life" as an abstract, term. Our reply to
+this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is
+simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that
+his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other,
+either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition
+entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able
+pathological anatomist of the London University college is a "living
+thing." He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is
+capable of growing, by "selection and interstitial appropriation," in
+reputation at least, if not in the direction of "an independent entity."
+His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the
+ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal
+manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional
+labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea
+that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a
+London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or
+the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not
+in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His
+assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the
+phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.
+
+Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism
+cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any
+more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of
+gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing
+organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the
+universe (call it the will of God, gravitation or what you may) must have
+existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either
+advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over
+effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the
+phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To
+say that there can be no _manifestation_ of life without an organism is
+true; but to assume that the vital principle which organizes is dependent
+on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be the
+lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that
+cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental
+processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying
+the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.
+
+"Plato lived." He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant
+of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have
+looked upon as "the temple of God," and all the world would have
+recognized as a god-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek
+chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
+All agreed in this. And yet it was not the _habitat_ but the _habitant_
+that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest
+enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was
+the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling _Archeus_, presiding
+over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic powers
+therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even
+Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this,
+with all that his new terms "ontogeny" and "phylogeny" may imply. When
+potential life passed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it
+was not the pabulum that assimilated the man, but the man the pabulum. If
+this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case
+of plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the
+phenomenal manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a
+cabbage-stalk. In other words, if the animating principle of life--or, as
+the Bible has it, the "animating soul of life"--is not what manifests
+itself in material embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor
+Haeckel mean by his new term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines
+of descent in all organic beings?
+
+If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether _mal posA(C)_. Pabulum
+is nothing without a preA"xisting "something" to dispose of it. It is not
+so much as a jelly-mass breakfast for one of Professor Haeckel's
+"protamoebA|;" for if it were served up in advance, there would be none of
+his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it, much less any of
+his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in her "hand-book of
+cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch your hare. But our
+ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the hare and the curry, in
+serving up his pabulum to the "protamoebA|." The improvident pabulum
+"evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like, is eviscerated by them,
+as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life, therefore, begins in the
+tragedy of Mount CithA|ron, it is to be hoped it will end in the delights
+of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+
+
+
+The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
+seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
+not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
+their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
+super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
+that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
+heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100A deg.
+C--212A deg. F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially when
+the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of fifteen or
+twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the light of all
+the experiments which have been made in this direction, there is some
+doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many, if not
+most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100A deg. C, there is little
+or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more tenacious of
+life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is equally
+unquestionable.
+
+M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
+capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
+of 120A deg. to 125A deg. C. (248-257A deg. F), while the same spores entirely lose their
+germinating power after an exposure for half an hour or more to a slightly
+higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on "The Action of Heat
+on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the proceedings of the Royal
+Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are capable of resisting the
+action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300A deg. F, although exposed
+therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however
+diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question
+in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the
+seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible
+"germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth itself.
+
+We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
+materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
+they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
+no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
+by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
+between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
+conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
+other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
+obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
+Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
+protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
+in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
+Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
+any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
+homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
+give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
+soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
+any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
+character of the infusoria appearing therein.[28] The cells are living
+organisms springing from vital units, and can no more manifest themselves
+independently of these units than life can manifest itself independently
+of an actual organism. And they make their appearance in the proper
+environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its primordial germ or
+vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the soil. Everywhere
+the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the plant or tree
+precedes the natural seeds it bears.
+
+This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
+vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
+vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
+single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
+living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
+verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
+as we may into the _arcana_ of nature in search of exact scientific truth,
+and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
+propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
+and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
+inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
+predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
+or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
+Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
+we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
+universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
+all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
+infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
+such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
+as a vehicle of thought.
+
+To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
+may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
+metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
+without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
+operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
+intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
+things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
+unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
+the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
+God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
+successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
+if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
+outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
+insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
+conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
+the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
+outside of it.
+
+But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
+overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
+mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
+uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
+the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
+greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
+that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
+an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
+any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
+"We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
+attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
+universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
+themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
+overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
+one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
+other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
+yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
+completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
+which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
+therein, originally came.
+
+But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
+scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
+will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
+God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
+universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
+the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
+independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
+space, or time independently of eternity. [29]
+
+According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
+essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
+all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
+modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
+were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
+that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
+whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
+law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
+order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
+the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
+that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
+manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
+exhibited in scientific formulA|. The higher and more satisfactory
+induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
+made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
+till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
+organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
+point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
+give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
+causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
+which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
+potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
+necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
+inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.
+
+Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
+who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
+position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
+our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
+a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
+in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
+once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
+a universe
+
+  "Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."
+
+But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
+life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
+universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
+positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
+before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" _in tandem_, that
+the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
+induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
+of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
+to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
+reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
+mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
+nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
+almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
+although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
+proportions of that scientific toy.
+
+Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
+matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
+countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
+different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital
+unit" can be _evolved_, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
+"primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
+can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
+chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
+nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
+is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
+multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
+that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
+confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists
+upon drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads
+of living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
+earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
+organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and
+vegetal world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the
+identical language we here use.
+
+And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
+grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
+can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
+vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
+unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
+point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
+microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
+units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
+insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
+crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
+beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
+know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
+development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
+the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
+knows nothing--we know nothing.
+
+Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
+now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
+phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
+exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
+a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
+studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
+of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
+that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
+fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
+tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
+specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
+undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
+Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
+but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
+knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
+beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
+reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
+contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
+He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
+glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
+distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
+vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-_unit_ and
+the dog-_unit,_ instead of falling back on his bioplastic spinners and
+weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing workers of the
+one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is far more
+rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict scientific
+methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to a single
+direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.
+
+There is a world-wide difference between the dog-_ego_ and the man-_ego;_
+but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
+bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one
+master-_ego_ as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall
+differentiate this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they
+shall work. Not a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed
+by the one head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts
+determine nothing, direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as
+obediently as a galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate
+movements, all molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic
+force, are the work of the one vital webster, or principle of life,
+within--that which shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is
+true from the first or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ,"
+until the real occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic
+weavers, and lies down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines
+its own structural form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to
+the slightest impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The
+occupant of this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers
+after another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of
+woven texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the
+same _physical_ dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for
+his master, carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in
+the chase, gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home,
+exhibits the same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to
+sleep, dreams of the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to
+engage. This continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty
+years of physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen
+times over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
+undifferentiated "dog-unit."
+
+Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
+fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
+bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
+sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
+led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
+expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
+cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
+one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
+only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
+as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
+conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
+re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
+producing it _de novo_ have not yet been ascertained, nor is it likely
+they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction between
+crystallizable matter and living substance.
+
+And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
+destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
+germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
+environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
+or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
+composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
+adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
+developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
+true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
+morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
+constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
+doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
+forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
+spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
+prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
+the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
+nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
+into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.
+
+In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
+recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
+at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
+ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
+have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
+certain small fishes of the _Cyprinidae_ and other families, have made
+their appearance therein.[30] Nobody has thought of stocking these
+standing pools of water with the fish in question, nor has there been any
+surface overflow to account for their presence, nor any other apparent
+means of transportation, if we except the fish-catching birds, and they
+generally swallow their food in the water or on the nearest tree to the
+point of capture. Any theory accounting for the presence of spawn is,
+therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have traversed hard clay
+deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to make their appearance
+in these waters. The only possible explanation of this class of phenomena,
+and they are by no means infrequent, is to be found in "favoring
+conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are primordial
+manifestations of life, and such as would have made their appearance in
+any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under the same
+favoring conditions.
+
+And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
+cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
+grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
+principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
+another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
+of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
+May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
+countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
+in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
+those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
+vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
+persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
+present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
+detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
+dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
+grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
+his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
+Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
+time, is not the question. It is the _fact_ of vital growth that we are
+after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as well
+as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with sturdy
+old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all _vital_ law--"has her
+seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world."
+
+Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
+life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
+constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
+contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
+completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
+nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
+and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
+and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
+invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
+organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
+elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
+in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
+living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
+assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
+and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
+mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
+living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
+little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
+principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
+a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
+using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
+demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
+intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
+unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
+the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
+having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
+mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
+life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
+may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
+soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
+fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
+embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
+"dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."
+
+Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
+theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
+beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
+of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
+organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
+except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
+over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
+the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
+reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
+Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
+matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
+once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
+intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
+anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
+or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
+an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
+tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
+of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
+"dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
+fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
+endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
+limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
+ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
+sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
+nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
+Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
+been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
+highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
+force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
+bound to except.
+
+Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
+may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
+the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
+all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
+classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
+matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
+between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
+germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
+least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
+statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
+bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
+mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
+merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
+cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
+microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
+cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
+tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
+matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
+view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
+vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
+physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
+performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
+assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
+species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
+very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
+structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
+own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
+these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
+well as meaning.
+
+The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
+is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
+millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
+Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
+biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
+comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
+specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
+each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
+like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
+together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
+and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
+appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
+was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
+direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
+_in_ all living organisms, not _from_ them; directing Professor Beale's
+"bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of necessary
+plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first instance;
+observing no developmental processes by which one form of life laps over
+upon another, and following no order but that of universal harmony in the
+Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for existence, even among
+the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and the smallest and
+weakest must give place to the largest and strongest everywhere, and _vice
+versa_, as Time, the greatest of all rodents, gnaws away at the mystical
+tree of life. But in every living organism, from the lowest and simplest
+to the highest and most complex, all bioplastic spinners of filamentous
+tissue, all plastide weavers of membranous or spun matter, all epithelial
+bobbin-runners, and other anatomical helpers and workers, perform their
+respective tasks under the special supervision we have named, that is,
+under the higher unit of life. They all work for the advancement and
+well-being of the higher organism of which they form a component and
+necessarily subordinate part.
+
+The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
+and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
+from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
+evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
+wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
+far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
+mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
+accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
+other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
+not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
+carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
+and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
+made _his_ happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
+equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
+upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
+direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
+shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells.
+
+But decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale,
+although one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is
+that which makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have
+already referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
+altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
+half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
+vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
+the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
+and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
+Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
+something--a sort of _tertium quid_--between living and non-living matter.
+But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his carmine
+solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts, inferentially at
+least, that all other matter, in any and every living organism, is "dead
+matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no matter is living in
+any vital organism which has not been assimilated and built up into living
+membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case of man) to his will,
+as well as performing the autonomous functions of plants and the lower
+animals. For all these membranous tissues are innumerably thronged with
+bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the purposes of obedience to
+man's will, or of performing any autonomous function, but simply to supply
+the tissues with the necessary nutrient matter to make up for the constant
+waste that is going on in a healthy living organ. This waste is very much
+greater than has heretofore been supposed, so that the man or animal of
+to-day may be an entirely distinct and separate one, considered
+materially, from that of a year or more ago. And this averment would have
+a decided advantage over Professor Beale's, since, in meeting a friend, we
+might be certain that four-fifths of him at least was alive, while the
+other one-fifth was industriously at work to keep him alive, instead of a
+stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be, upon the street. Besides, it
+would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving
+themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale
+virtually does in the argument.
+
+The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
+life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
+exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
+are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
+weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
+plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
+song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
+and brilliant _roulades_, as if the little vocalist had caught its
+inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
+now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
+occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
+dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
+to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
+chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
+interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
+looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
+ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
+threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
+weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
+nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
+any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
+suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
+hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
+weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
+music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. _Where_ it is, not
+man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
+uplifted by inspiration, that--
+
+  "The soul of music never dies,
+     Nor slumbers in its shell;
+  'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,
+     And thence returns to dwell."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+
+
+
+Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which
+have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an
+"undiscovered correlative of force." Those who have the reputation of
+being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm
+of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly
+contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to
+eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of
+Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens
+where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its
+glory, this "undiscovered correlative of force," which they have indicated
+as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.
+Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles
+us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were
+they to define life as an "undiscovered force" simply, their definition
+would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in
+precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor
+metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never
+answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the
+success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this
+"correlative" of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since
+they are so chary of informing us themselves.
+
+A "correlate" of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal
+relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses
+nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relationship, such as
+father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.
+As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this
+particular force stands in some sort of relationship to the other forces
+of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the _material_ forces of
+nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relationship is
+what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the
+universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed
+relationship as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital
+force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or
+sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relationship, is not stated. The
+scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is
+to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to _x_ (the vital or
+unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and consequents
+together, and eliminating the value of _x_, we may mathematically obtain
+the value of vital force.
+
+But to eliminate the value of _x_ is what troubles them. Herbert Spencer
+has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any higher
+correlation than "molecular force;" nor can he definitely inform us
+whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he
+manifestly regards their relationship as constituting either a very
+attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the
+value of _x_, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and
+gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly
+contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in
+scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular
+force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not
+demolished, this machinery, in his recent treatise on "The Mystery of
+Life," we will spare it any further blows, and proceed to the
+consideration of "molecular force."
+
+Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us
+definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon
+to use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of
+"molecular attraction," or that force acting immediately on the
+integrant molecules or particles of a body, as distinguished from the
+attraction of gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it
+comes to ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to
+molecules, such as have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must
+feel our way with caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or
+rather of their materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather
+force, that is in them.
+
+It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a "molecule" is
+the smallest conceivable quantity of a simple or compound substance, as an
+"atom" is the smallest conceivable quantity of an element which enters
+into combination with other elements to form material substance. For
+instance, the smallest conceivable quantity of water is a molecule, while
+the smallest conceivable quantity of either of the two elements of which
+water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore,
+there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And
+since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may
+contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which
+lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest
+forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural
+alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter,
+and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man,
+knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into
+unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre,
+and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the
+general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on
+the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the
+actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest
+hypothetical data. It is the office of "molecular force," if there is any
+meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by "molecular attraction," to
+conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.
+
+If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man
+must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks
+and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended
+to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war
+with the principal phenomena of life, and should be classed with the other
+undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as "the
+fictions of a mechanical imagination." The truth is that these much abused
+and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in
+nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that
+inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a
+devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of
+quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at
+once seek quiet and loving companionship with kindred molecules, and
+retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from
+their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or
+constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living
+dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as
+perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be
+imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold
+of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery
+and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination
+of the molecules.
+
+If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about
+time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter,
+motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the
+multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for
+recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing
+the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional
+value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and
+vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their
+several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not
+emancipating language from the gross thraldom into which their "molecular
+machinery" has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the
+force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of
+fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less
+impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and
+things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences,
+coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable
+chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions
+of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and
+foot--under the one explanatory head of "force-correlation." We protest
+against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe,
+even if it were practicable under scientific methods.
+
+But Professor Tyndall denies that "molecular groupings" and "molecular
+motions" explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating
+life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[31] And it would be
+difficult to cite a stronger and more determined materialist as authority
+on the point we are considering. He says: "If love were known to be
+associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the
+brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as ignorant as
+before, as to the cause of motion." But there is no proof that the
+molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary for
+keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the brain
+itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a state
+of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been
+exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of
+consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there
+can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one
+set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules,
+as seen in the object glass of the microscope, there is no absolute
+certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any
+life-manifestation, as heretofore assumed. Some quite as well defined
+forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to
+predicate vitality of them.[32] These infinitessimal and constantly
+varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth part of an inch
+in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may owe their
+oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations, and even
+their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes than
+those strictly "vital." And it should be borne in mind that their actual
+movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as their real
+dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic infusions only,
+they are presumably vital organisms rather than fomentative or mere
+filamentous yeast-manifestations.
+
+Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place
+under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that
+the "primordial cells" possesses in any degree the characteristics of a
+"machine," nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the
+character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to
+them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He
+says: "They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the shells
+scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which
+the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the
+cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted."
+This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional
+office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's "formed matter."
+The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and
+simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.
+Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial
+cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-shells have
+been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come,
+both the cells and shells, from the preA"xisting vital units, or
+determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement,
+without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent
+tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only
+favor its manifestation.
+
+But some of the materialists claim that what we call "vital units," or
+invisible, indestructible germs,[33] are at best only "physical
+relations;" that they have nothing more than a hypothetical existence,
+without any independent recognizable quality justifying our conclusions
+respecting them. But may not this identical language be retortively
+suggested in the case of their "correlates of force?" What more than a
+hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm to get rid of
+all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a feature in
+their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have shown in the
+verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of cause and
+effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical aggregates, and
+even assign absolute identity of attributes; but when it comes to
+dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial identity only, and deny
+the presence of the law altogether.
+
+Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in
+controversy. In speaking of his "plastide particles," Professor Bastian,
+the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says:
+"Certain of these particles, through default of _necessary conditions,_
+never actually develop into higher modes of being." Here he makes the
+absence of "necessary conditions" the cause of non-development, while he
+stoutly denies that the presence of such "conditions" give rise to the
+development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he
+speaks of the elemental origin of "living matter" as "having probably
+taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when
+such matter was first engendered." But how his "sum-total of external
+conditions," acting upon _dead_ matter, can "engender" _living_ matter, is
+one of those "related heterogenetic phenomena" which he does not
+condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that he
+gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of
+life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.
+
+To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of
+this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon
+the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all
+life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be
+no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards
+structural development, but only external conditions acting upon "dead
+matter," in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or
+undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped
+stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the
+complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their
+integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous
+entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as
+well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements
+should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous
+complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life "engendered from
+dead matter" in the material universe.
+
+For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more
+resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the
+happening by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the
+"fortuitous concourse of atoms;" now it is the "fortuitous aggregate of
+molecules." By what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have
+dropped out of their scientific categories, and the molecules have been
+advanced to their commanding place in _absolute accidentalness_, is one
+of those unassignable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We
+can only account for it on the supposition that they have all become
+worshippers of that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn
+of Amalthea and plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of
+language and other much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable
+knack at disposing of them.
+
+The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two
+conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary
+environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.
+Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning
+incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see
+that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by
+merely substituting "molecular force" for "vital force," in the
+explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do
+take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary
+plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not
+dependent on the vital principle _as it acts_, rather than on the
+molecules _as they act_,[34] The higher force should always subordinate
+the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other processes, of nature. It is
+the vital principle that differentiates matter--the aggregate of
+molecules--not matter differentiating the vital principle. No "molA(C)cules
+organiques" can ever differentiate an ape-unit into a man-unit, any more
+than Professor Tyndall can fetch a Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an
+ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a man-unit, eternally a man-unit.
+
+Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed _unit_
+as "_une idA(C)e dans l'entendement de Dieu," _ (to use a better French
+expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off their
+own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that
+"life exists," and that it has existed from all eternity _as possible_
+in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic
+science is disposed to butt its head against this impregnable
+proposition, it can do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may
+happen to the inconsiderate head.
+
+For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as
+there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search
+and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the
+forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in
+the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they
+descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions
+of life, or passed upward and outward, in _Sirius-_distances, to the
+irresolvable nebulA|, where other and perhaps brighter stars might burst
+upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still enormous
+fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same. Wider
+and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the stellar
+swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the
+uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and
+Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of space,
+the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the
+world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished
+the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and
+hangeth the earth upon nothing--"_holdeth back the face of his throne and
+spreadeth his cloud upon it_."
+
+What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small
+specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call "living matter," or, in
+the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming masses which
+we call "dead matter," who shall say that "the secret places of the Most
+High" are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of God first moved
+through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all
+matter, there was not imparted to it that "animating principle of life" of
+which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting
+itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set
+aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological
+expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for
+scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their
+specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and
+molecular theories of life.
+
+But speaking of the higher forces as subordinating the lower, suggests
+that there should be something more definitely explained regarding the
+hypothesis of "differentiation," on which Mr. Herbert Spencer hangs so
+much of his mathematical faith in the true explication of vital
+phenomena. The term "differentiation" is not so formidable as it might
+seem to the general reader at first sight. As applied to physiological
+problems it should have the same determinate value, in expressing
+functional differences, as in the higher operations of mathematics.
+Nothing can, of course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things
+differentiate each other, even when functionally allied. The actual
+coA"fficient sought is the difference effected, in functional value, in
+one of two independent variables. For all formulA| in differentiation are
+constructed on the hypothesis that only one of two variables suffers
+change. The differential coA"fficient has yet to be determined which shall
+express the developmental changes in two variables at once. When,
+therefore, we attempt to extend the formulA| of differentiation to plant
+and animal life, we are confronted by a very formidable difficulty at the
+outset--the impossibility of determining an invariable coA"fficient for
+any two variables. Besides, all attempts at differentiating an ape-unit
+into anything else than an ape-unit would be as impossible as to multiply
+or divide cabbages by turnips, or sparrows by sparrowhawks. Such
+divisions would give us no quotients, any more than their
+differentiations would give us a coA"fficient. Physiological
+differentiation will, therefore, never help us out of fixed species or
+nearly allied types. We can bridge no specific differences by it. In the
+differentiation of the horse and the ass for instance, the superior blood
+will predominate in the preservation of types, and even the mule will
+kick against further differentiation. Nature would so utterly abhor the
+practice as resolutely to slam the door in Mr. Spencer's face, if the
+obstinacy of the mule did not kick it off its hinges.
+
+And nature would be quite as intractable in the case of
+"force-correlation," another of Mr. Spencer's redoubtable phrases. This
+term is quite recent in its application to animate objects, nor has it
+been long applied to inanimate. It is claimed to be a recently discovered
+force, and is one that the materialists have seized upon as the Herculean
+club with which to smite all vital theories to the earth. Its meaning, so
+far as it has any, is not difficult to get at. The simplest way to explain
+it, however, is the best. The reader is to understand that when he rubs
+two flat sticks together, the heat thereby engendered is not the result of
+friction, as all the world has heretofore supposed, but that the amount of
+force expended in rubbing the right-hand stick against the left-hand
+stick, is, by some law of versability, not over-well defined, transferred
+to the two sticks, and gets so entangled between their surfaces that it
+can only reappear in another and altogether different kind of force. When
+it leaves the hands and passes into the two sticks, it is, as the
+materialists assert, vital force. But as no force can be annihilated, the
+conclusive assumption is that it still exists somewhere. All of it, in the
+first place, went into the two flat sticks, and, when there, _ceased to be
+vital force._ Some of it disappeared, of course, in overcoming the inertia
+of the sticks, but the bulk of it became entangled with the superficial
+molecules of the two sticks, and reappeared as _heat_--another name for
+molecular force.
+
+This is what is meant by the "differentiation" of vital force into
+molecular force, and _vice versa_. But by what process of rubbing, under
+this law of versability, molecular force can be reversed, or
+differentiated back into vital force, Mr. Spencer has not condescended to
+inform us. The simple truth is, and the materialists will be forced to
+admit it in the end, that there is no verification of this theory beyond
+that of mere force-equivalence. For instance, it has been experimentally
+determined that a certain amount of fuel expended in heat is equivalent to
+a certain amount of mechanical force, not mechanical _work_, as M. Carnot
+puts it. For force is not expended in work until it is actually generated,
+and the amount generated, not that expended in work, is the real
+equivalence of the heat produced from fuel.
+
+Another problem is presented when it comes to determining the amount of
+generated force necessary to run a piece of machinery which shall
+accomplish a given amount of mechanical work.
+
+A far better phrase to express this equivalence of force has been
+suggested and used by several writers in what is called the "Transmutation
+of Force." For there is no correlation, or reciprocal relation, between
+heat as originally produced by the consumption of fuel and the force as
+engendered in steam before it is transmuted into work. Nor is there any
+real equivalence as between the two forces after its transmutation. A very
+large per centage of heat is lost in its transmutation from a latent form
+in fuel to an active or available form in steam, and a still greater loss
+in its transmission into work by machinery. Theoretically, there may be
+such an equivalence as that named, but practically it is impossible to
+realize it. And a theory that is impossible of realization is of no
+practical utility in itself, and of little value as the basis of further
+theory. If, then, the theory of force equivalence is a failure in
+practical application, it furnishes a very poor basis on which to
+predicate force-correlation, or the doctrine of reciprocal forces. It is
+estimated, for instance, that a pound weight falling seven hundred and
+seventy-two feet, will, in striking the earth, impart to it a degree of
+heat equivalent to raising one pound of water 1A deg. F. But the heat thus
+imparted can never be so utilized as to raise a pound weight seven hundred
+and seventy-two feet into the air.
+
+This shows that there is no actual reciprocity of relationship between the
+force as originally engendered and finally expended in work. Nor can it be
+shown that the original force is transmuted or changed into another and
+different kind of force by the operation. The force generated and the
+force expended are essentially one and the same, as much so as that
+transmitted from the power to the weight by means of a rope and pulley.
+And the quality of the force is not changed, whether the weight be lifted
+by machinery or the human hand. Force, in its mechanical sense, is that
+power which produces motion, or an alteration in the direction of motion,
+and is incapable of being specialized, except in a highly figurative
+sense, into a thousand and one correlates of motion. But these
+miscellaneous and figurative forces are not what we are considering. The
+doctrine of force-correlation takes no such wide and comprehensive sweep.
+It embraces neither the force of wit, nor the force of folly; but
+mechanical force and its equivalents. The force exercised by the human
+hand in lifting a weight either with or without rope and pulley is, in
+every definitional sense of the word, mechanical force. For the arm and
+hand are only the implements, or mechanical contrivances of nature, by
+which the will-power transmutes itself into work, or, more properly
+speaking, transmits itself from the point of force-generation to that of
+force-expenditure. And this is precisely the office performed by all
+mechanical contrivances for the transmission--not transmutation--of force.
+And the most perfect machine is that which transmits the engendered force,
+with the least possible waste or abandonment, to its point of ultimate
+expenditure in work.
+
+All these hypothetical correlates of force, therefore, predicated upon the
+doctrine of force-transmutation, have no foundation in fact, since the
+force transmitted from the point of generation to the point of expenditure
+undergoes no change but that of direction, in its passage along rope,
+wire, belt, pulley, shafting, etc. A man whose limbs have been paralyzed,
+may still will to remove mountains. The will-power is the same, but the
+mechanical contrivances for its transmission are wanting. Of the actual
+point or centre of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power,
+we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards
+the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and
+tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or
+pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a
+rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular
+changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely
+related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through the contracted
+tissues, electrifies the crowbar, or flashes into work from the point of a
+pickaxe. Whatever produces, or tends to produce, motion, or an alteration
+in its direction, is mechanical force, no matter from what force-centre it
+may start. When we can definitely determine the centre of vital force, as
+exercised in building up vital structure, _not in wielding pickaxes_, it
+is to be hoped we shall be able to distinguish, by the proper correlates,
+vital force from that which is mechanical. But the task is manifestly a
+hopeless one with the materialists.
+
+Professor Beale positively denies that there are any such physical
+force-relations as those claimed by the materialists, and asserts that
+vital force bears no relation, or correlation, to either chemical or
+physical force; that the one is a distinct and separate factor from the
+other, and cannot be interpreted in the same force-formulA|. He says: "The
+idea of motion, or heat, or light, or electricity _forming_ or _building_
+up, or _constructing_ any texture capable of fulfilling a definite
+purpose, seems absurd, and opposed to all that is known, and yet is the
+notion continually forced upon us, that vitality, which does construct, is
+but a correlate of ordinary energy or motion."
+
+But after devoting so much time to "force-correlation," and
+"force-differentiation," the advocates of "molecular-machinery" may feel
+themselves neglected if we dismiss their favorite hobby without further
+notice. The precise parentage of this term is disputed, but it has any
+number of _putative_ fathers. We have spoken of the size of the molecules
+themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled together on the
+point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now consider the size
+of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own machine, and is
+provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact, it is a very
+nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the molecules,
+instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules run the
+machines. Unfortunately, the question is one that can never be determined.
+The requisite scientific data will forever be wanting.
+
+But Professor James C. Maxwell, now, or quite recently, filling the chair
+of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, England, has
+furnished us with _approximate_ calculations. On the strength of his
+approximations we will proceed to consider the dimensions of these
+wonderful little machines. And first, it may be axiomatically laid down
+that these molecular machines, which either run the molecules or are run
+by them, can never exceed the size of their respective molecules.
+Conceding, then, that each one of these machines exactly fits into its own
+molecule, so as to present identically the same dimensions--as well as
+their largest possible dimensions--it would require two millions of them,
+placed in a row, to make one millimetre, or the one three hundred and
+ninety-four thousandths of an inch in length, or seven hundred and
+eighty-eight billions of them to make one inch! Who will ever be staggered
+at _Sirius_-distances, after this? And who will deny that an infinite
+world lies below the point of our microscopic vision, if not an Infinite
+kingdom and throne beyond our telescopic glance?
+
+But, following the same high authority in experimental physics, let us
+consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not
+marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions
+of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply
+give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system.
+Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing
+in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet
+kicking of the beam, just a fraction between four and five grammes, or--to
+differentiate the weights--a small fraction over one-tenth of an ounce!
+
+But why not get down to the atoms, of which the molecules are only the
+theoretical congeries, and marshal the "atomic forces" into line? These
+embryonic atoms are much the braver warriors, and, when summoned to do
+battle, spring, lithe and light-armed, against the elemental foe. They are
+no cowardly molecules, these atoms, but make war against Titans, as well
+as Titanic thrones and powers. The elements recognize them as their body
+guardsmen, their corps of invincible lancers, their bravest and best
+soldiers in fight. And they are wholly indifferent as to the legions of
+molecules arrayed against them, and would as soon hurl a mountain of them
+into the sea as to sport with a zephyr or caper with the east wind. Why
+not summon these countless myriads of bright and invincible spearmen, to
+batter down the walls of this Cretan labyrinth of Life? An army of these
+would be worth all the molecules that Professor Maxwell could array in
+line, in a thousand years. No life-problem need remain unsolved with their
+bright spears to drive the tenebrious mists before them. Even Professor
+Tyndall's "fog-banks of primordial haze" would be ignominiously scattered
+in flight before these atomic legions. Let our materialistic friends
+summon them, then, to their aid. The field of controversy will never be
+won by their molecular "Hessians." The ineffably bright lancers that stand
+guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout
+the vitalistic enemy. Advance them then to the front, and, beneath the
+shadowy wing of pestilence or some other appalling ensign of destruction,
+the abashed vital squadrons will flee in dismay.
+
+But let us pass from scientific speculations to alleged scientific facts.
+In a paper read by Dr. Hughes Bennett before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1861, its author says: "The first step, in the process of
+organic formation, is the production of an organic fluid; the second, the
+precipitation of organic molecules, from which, according to the molecular
+law of growth, all other textures are derived either directly or
+indirectly." Here again the molecules, and not the elementary atoms, are
+advanced to the front, and not a little anxiety is shown, in a
+definitional way, to identify vital processes of growth with crystalline
+processes of formation. But Dr. Bennett entirely mistakes, as well as
+misstates, the process of vital development, if he does not overlook the
+law governing the formation of crystals. There can be no symmetrically
+arranged solids in an inorganic fluid without the presence of some law, or
+principle, definitely determining, not the "precipitation," but the
+"formation," of crystals. The inorganic particles are not precipitated or
+thrown downward, any more than they are sublevated or thrown upward. The
+process is one of formation, not precipitation. Every crystallographer,
+not hampered by materialistic views and anti-vital theories, admits the
+presence of a fixed and determinate law governing each crystalline system,
+whatever may be the homologous parts or the unequal axes it represents.
+
+And so of the equally undeviating law of vital growth. Life comes from no
+mere "precipitation of organic molecules," as Dr. Bennett would have us
+believe. If so, what is it that precipitates the molecules? They can
+hardly be said to precipitate themselves. To precipitate, in a chemical
+sense, is to be thrown down, or caused to be thrown down, as a substance
+from its solution. What, then, causes the molecules to be thus
+precipitously thrown down from a fluid to a solid, or a semi-solid, state?
+It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the
+molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of
+nature--one presupposing an intelligent law-giver--to effect the
+"precipitating process," if any such really exists.
+
+But it does not exist. The first step is one of development and
+growth--the manifestation of functional activity--the building up of
+organic or cellular tissue. The exact process, in the case of seed-bearing
+plants and trees, is well known. All those familiar with the
+characteristic differences of seeds, their chemical constituents, their
+tegumentary coverings, rudimentary parts, etc., thoroughly understand the
+process in its outward manifestation. There is no precipitation of
+molecules as in an organic fluid, unless the albumen lying between the
+embryo and testa of the seeds, and constituting the nutriment on which the
+plant feeds during its primary stages of growth, can be called a fluid. It
+throws none of its characteristic ingredients downward any more than
+upward. Indeed the greater tendency of its molecules is upward rather than
+downward, in the "molecular processes" (vital ones) by which the embryonic
+cell is started upon its career of plant-life. The celebrated Dr. Liebig
+says of this albuminous environment: "It is the foundation, the
+starting-point, of the whole series of peculiar tissues which constitute
+those organs which are the seat of all vital actions." In the case of
+animal life, this albumen abounds in the serum of the blood, enters
+largely into the chyle and lymph, goes to build up the tissues and
+muscles, and is the chief ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the
+brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to
+coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries
+to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less
+insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140A deg. to 160A deg. F.
+
+When the seed is planted or placed in water, it first commences to swell
+from the absorption of the water or moisture of the ground by the pores of
+its external covering, the favorable temperature being from 60A deg. to 80A deg. F.
+It gradually expands until its outer membranes burst, and its initial
+rootlets clasp their hold upon the earth. From this point its several
+stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the
+first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a
+change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it
+would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in
+decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the
+grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the
+Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the
+decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened
+into life--ascends into the bright light, the warm sunshine, the
+refreshing presence of showers and dews. In this way it fulfils its
+providential purpose of yielding to the sower the more munificent life
+which he is forever seeking to attain.
+
+Its germination is the springing up of the inner living principle of the
+grain, not its outer envelope or dead husk. This disappears in decay,
+except the small nutrient portion within which the germinal principle of
+life would seem to reside, and which undergoes a thorough chemical change
+in the process of passing from death unto life, or being assimilated and
+taken up into the new living structure. The Apostle's comparison
+distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from
+death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still
+more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the
+dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher
+and more perfect life--the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in
+the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and
+co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally
+constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing
+agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the
+present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and
+decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most
+beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death,
+and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of
+life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-Point.
+
+
+
+Granting that the assumption of Darwinism rests, as claimed, on the fixed
+and inflexible adaptation of means to ends, in the diversified yet
+measurably specialized processes of nature, there is no logical deduction
+to be drawn therefrom but that which traces the representatives of all the
+great types of the animal kingdom to one single source, and that not the
+Sovereign Intelligence of the Universe, but a mere "ovule in protoplasm,"
+or what may be defined, in its unaggregated form, as an inconceivably
+small whirligig, having motion on a central axis, but whether an
+independent motion of its own, or one derived from an Infinite
+Intelligence, the Darwinian systematizers are not bold enough to aver.
+They have too many _a priori_ scruples either to assert the one
+proposition or to deny the other. What set this little whirligig in motion
+is a mystery that lies beyond the purview of science, so called, and into
+the depths of this infinitessimal and most mysterious little chamber they
+refuse to go.
+
+They search not for the evidence of an Infinite Intelligence in the
+outermost circle of the heavens where the highest is to be found, and
+where a bound is set that we may not pass, but shutting their eyes to all
+the grander evidences of such an Intelligence, they dive down into the
+infinitessimal realm of nature and assume to dig out the sublimer secrets
+of the universe there. And this is their grand discovery: That this
+infinitessimal whirligig of theirs has not only whirled man into
+existence, but the entire circle of the heavens, with the innumerable host
+of stars that march therein, and all the boundless systems of worlds that
+roll in space. With this subordination of the Infinite to the
+infinitessimal, of intelligence to insensate matter, of divine energy, so
+to speak, to blind molecular force, they are satisfied; and, like the mole
+in the fable, conceive their little molecule to be the only possible
+creator of a stupendous universe.
+
+Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating
+theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or
+the old adage, _omne vivum ex ovo_--all life is from an egg. For they
+assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in
+protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being
+this little _ovum_ or cellule, from which have issued all possible
+organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory
+essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific coArdination of its
+several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of this
+infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state of all
+matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of past time,
+not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so
+stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the
+first conception of it.
+
+Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of
+development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the
+reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the
+incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the
+"selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a
+beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things
+right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development
+begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he
+admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato,
+Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of
+legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."
+
+Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long
+one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined
+empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the
+universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive
+sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity
+for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena,
+in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away
+the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new
+varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in
+obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."
+
+In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be
+called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that,
+however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of
+uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not
+only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical
+deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of
+uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or
+approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in
+the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link
+connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest
+known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher
+congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no
+saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The
+heights of science are not to be scaled _per saltum_, except as degrees
+may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[35]
+
+There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like
+the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of
+amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and
+improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what
+page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back,
+has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the
+relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of
+the _Infusoria_ possess the same or similar characteristics, and predicate
+relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants sometimes spring
+from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our diagnoses must be
+freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the chain of
+continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the imaginary
+foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most
+enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid
+partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been
+pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future
+discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science,
+inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no
+assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we
+constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of
+imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars
+into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of
+creation after truth.
+
+But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he
+meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the
+first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is
+from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate
+to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges
+it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his _primum
+mobile_--or on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the
+eye of imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not
+matter itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary
+constituent of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its
+unaggregated form, admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of
+comprehension; but rests entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here
+add that a system which begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in
+them--as that of bridging the chasmal difference between a gorilla and a
+Plato--can be dignified into a science only by a still greater stretch of
+the imagination--that of bridging the difference between the Darwinian
+zero and his ninety degrees of development in a Darwin himself!
+
+Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in
+philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists
+between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not
+self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic
+life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation
+existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of
+matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and
+there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as
+extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts
+are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction
+exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in
+our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where
+reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.
+
+And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once
+aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of
+these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have
+before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we
+follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the
+blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these
+intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found
+anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied
+upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as
+unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two
+ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No
+processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the
+elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual
+judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the
+world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to
+"Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.
+
+But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary _datum_ of
+consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on
+something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since
+science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged,
+furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of
+inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived,
+necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to
+the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its
+inseparable companion and guest.
+
+Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in
+the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, _was_ God,--or on Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and
+has only to go on _ad infinitum_ to whirl us out a God, as it has already
+whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this ovulistic
+whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm and man,
+since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the process
+has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between man and
+Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us nature
+evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a God
+presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations of
+the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."
+
+These evolutionists manifestly get the cart before the horse in their
+category of cosmological events. It is not inert matter organizing itself
+into life, nor any mode of physical or chemical action, nor any mere
+manifestation of motion or of heat, nor any other conceivable correlation
+of natural forces. None of these has enabled us to penetrate the
+mysterious _inner-chamber_ of life itself. For reasons obviously connected
+with our own welfare, He, from whom alone are "the issues of life," seems
+to have ordained that we should fathom the depths of both physical and
+chemical force, and beneficently wield and direct them to our own uses.
+But this vital force; this something that stands apart from and is
+essentially different from all other kinds of force, is of a nature that
+baffles all our efforts to approach. The power to grasp it, or even to
+penetrate in the slightest degree its mysteries, is delegated to none. All
+attempts to lay bare this principle of vitality, or level the barriers
+that separate it from physical or chemical action, have utterly failed. We
+know no more of its essence now than was known a thousand years ago, and
+know no less than will be known a thousand years hence. To become masters
+of the mystery, we must enter the impenetrable veil within which the
+Infinite Intelligence of the universe presides,--who, we are told,
+"sendeth forth his spirit, and we are created, who taketh away our breath,
+we die and return to our dust." [36]
+
+We are just as much bewildered in respect to this vital principle in our
+classifications of the myriads of little creatures careering over the
+field of the microscope, as when we turn to the most marked formations of
+genera and species in geological distribution. The great trouble with Mr.
+Darwin's _vinculum_ is, that its weakest links are precisely where the
+strongest should be found, and _vice versa_. With a candor rarely
+displayed by a writer who is spinning a theory, he admits this. The
+geological record is not what he would have it to be. Whole chapters are
+gone where they are most needed, and nature's lithography seems constantly
+at fault. Independent species are now and then springing up where
+derivatives should be looked for, while derivatives are everywhere
+disappearing in non-derivatives. Many of the middle Tertiary _molusca_,
+and a large proportion of the later Tertiary period, are specifically
+identical with the living species, of to-day. What has "natural selection"
+been doing for this family in the last million years or more? Manifestly
+nothing, and less than nothing, for some of the species have dropped out
+altogether.
+
+These facts, and hundreds of others like them, are constantly obtruding
+themselves upon our attention to show, in harmony with the Bible Genesis,
+the immutability of species--the absolute fixity of types--rather than
+their variability, as claimed. If nature abhors anything more than a
+_vacuum_, it is manifestly any marked transition from fixed types, and she
+thunders her edicts against it in the non-fertility of all hybrids. The
+doctrine of variation lacks the all-essential element of continuity, and
+is oftener at war with the theory of the "selection of the fittest," than
+it is with the selection of the "unfit." The leap from Lepidosirens to
+Amphibians is no greater than the interval between any two species of
+animals or plants yet discovered, either fossil or living. The intervals
+are as numerous as the species themselves, and everywhere constitute great
+and sudden leaps, or such transitional changes as "natural selection"
+could not have effected independently of intervening forms--those that
+nowhere exist in nature, and never have existed, if we are to credit
+geologic and paleontologic records. There is everywhere similarity of
+structure, but not identity; and the nearer we approach to identity of
+structure the wider the divergence in similarity of characteristics. A
+bird may be taught to talk and sing snatches of music. But no monkey has
+ever been able to articulate human sounds, much less give them rhythmical
+utterance.
+
+Take the case of the wild pigeon, a subject that especially delights Mr.
+Darwin. Most of the deviations are confined to the domesticated breeds,
+and none of these rank in strength, hardiness, capability of flight, or
+symmetry of structure, with the wild or typical bird. There are
+well-defined deviations, but no sensible improvements, except to the eye
+of the bird-fancier. The deviations are simply entailed weaknesses, or the
+very reverse of what should appear from the "selection of the fittest."
+The fact undeniably is, that these variations are almost wholly
+abnormal--mere exaggerated characteristics, induced in the first instance,
+perhaps, by high cultivation and close in-and-in breeding.
+
+Turn these abnormal varieties loose, let them go back to the aboriginal
+stock, and these characteristics will rapidly disappear; that is, they
+will ultimately lose themselves or melt away in the original type. Mr.
+Darwin admits that the tendency will be to reversion, but he insists,
+manifestly without any positive proof therefor, that the greater tendency
+is to new centres of attraction, and not necessarily the primitive one.
+But this is mere assumption--sheer begging the question on his
+part,--since all the oscillations are incontestibly about the original or
+type centre.
+
+The same may be said of the typical races of men, like the negro and wild
+Indian of our prairies. You may lift them out of their primitive
+condition--temporarily suspend, if you please so to put it, their
+primordial attraction,--but, left again to themselves, they will go back
+to the original type; that is, their offspring will again infest the
+jungles and roam their native hunting-grounds. The process here is the
+very reverse of the Darwinian theory. Reversion, as a rule, follows the
+degeneracy of types, instead of there being any favorable homogeneous
+result, springing from a new centre of attraction. The Indian makes a
+splendid savage, but a very poor white man. Think of Red Jacket taking the
+part of Mercutio in the play or enacting the more valiant _role_ of
+Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth. An infusion of white blood does not
+help the matter, but rather makes it worse. Generally, the meanest Indian
+on the continent is your half-breed, and among the negroes there is no
+term so expressive of the contempt of that race, as that applied by them
+to a mulatto. The present condition of Mexico affords a striking
+exemplification of this law of reversion. The inheritable characteristics
+or variations, produced from an infusion of Spanish blood, are rapidly
+disappearing--the native blood whipping out the European. The potency is
+in the inferior blood, simply because it is the predominating one. The
+result has been no homogeneous new race, but a reversion, now manifestly
+in progress, to the type centre or aboriginal stock. And the curse
+pronounced by Ezekiel upon mongrel tribes--"woe unto the mingled peoples"
+may have a significance in this connection worth considering; but it
+manifestly falls outside the scope of our present inquiry.
+
+In considering the embryological structure of man, and the homologies he
+therein presents to the lower animals, Mr. Darwin thus conclusively (in
+his judgment) remarks: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
+quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in
+his habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."
+
+But Mr. Darwin's pronominal "we," in this connection, admits of
+qualification. He can hardly speak for all the scientific world at once.
+The philosophical maxim of Sir Isaac Newton--_hypotheses non fingo_--I
+build no hypotheses, make no suppositions, but adhere to facts--has a few
+followers still left. But what are Mr. Darwin's facts? Has he yet
+discovered the caudal man, except as the ever-fertile Mr. Stanley heard of
+one in Africa? And where is his monkey that first lost the prehensile
+power to climb trees? For bear in mind that it was the loss of this
+prehensile power that resulted in the caudal atrophy of our monkey
+progenitors, _who became men simply because they were tailless monkeys!_
+They had lost their power to climb trees, and accordingly had no longer
+any use for tails to let themselves down from the limbs. A "beneficent
+necessity" therefore, according to Mr. Emerson, dropped the tail as
+something decidedly "unfit." For the simplest tyro in Darwinian philosophy
+will see that the loss of the Catarrhine monkey's tail, if it ever
+occurred, could not have resulted from the "selection of the fittest." The
+deeper Emersonian philosophy of the "rejection of the unfit," affords the
+only solution of the difficulty, and then only on the assumption that the
+tail is an unfit appendage for the monkey.
+
+With the loss of his tail, in the light of this new genesis, the monkey
+necessarily ceased to be arboreal in his habits. He could no longer
+subsist on the fruits and nuts of trees, or take refuge therein from his
+enemies. He had to go to work and make weapons to defend himself--to
+construct tools--make and set traps, live on his wits, and not on his
+prehensile power to climb trees. He soon discovered, of course, that the
+longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride
+towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic
+philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this
+was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more
+masterly feats of agility than ever,--those dependent, not on muscular
+function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow.
+Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he
+improved under this maternal instructor we are left to infer from the
+paramount conclusion of Mr. Darwin, _that the demoralized monkey became
+the incipient man_!
+
+But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
+differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the
+loss of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's
+brain? or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
+differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous
+and demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every
+bone, muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the
+same. The chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are
+differently bundled and differently strung. In intonations of
+voice--symmetry of arms, legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic
+and land habits, the frog is a much nearer approach to man than the
+monkey, as all caricaturists, delineating aldermanic proportions, will
+agree. And Mr. Darwin might have immortalized himself by deriving the
+builders of the ancient pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats
+and croakers of the Swiss lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For
+everybody knows, or thinks he knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he
+didn't wag it off, he certainly absorbed its waggishness as a
+distinguishing characteristic of the "coming man"--the future Artemas
+Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral origin will also
+account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all human
+juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
+relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
+encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
+on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
+agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
+loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor
+does he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated
+development." He is more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than
+any other, and finds the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That
+is, he assumes that among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the
+Tertiary or some other period, some female monkeys were less hirsute
+than others, and that they naturally preferred males possessing similar
+characteristics. These divergencies were thus commenced, and, by
+continuous "sexual selection," the infirmity (for such he regards the
+loss of hair) was propagated until the race was almost entirely denuded
+or bereft of this covering. In the same way he accounts for nearly all
+the differentiations of the race, among the various tribes now or
+formerly inhabiting the earth. All have sprung from the same semi-human
+progenitors--_apes that lost their capacity to subsist as apes, and
+hence found it necessary to subsist as men_!
+
+The law of degeneracy has, therefore, had quite as much to do with human
+origins as that of progressive development. In fact, it is the paramount
+law from a Darwinian stand-point. For the loss of hair and of the
+prehensile power to climb trees are both conceded by Mr. Darwin to be
+serious defects and drawbacks in the ape family.
+
+But the law of sexual selection, as treated by the evolutionists, is not
+scientifically accurate, nor is it true in fact. The loving tendency of
+nature is to opposites, not likes. The positive and negative poles are
+those that play into each other with most marvellous effect. Each repels
+its like and rushes to the embrace of its opposite. Extremes lovingly meet
+everywhere. A brunette selects a blonde and a blonde a brunette, as a
+general rule in matrimony. A tall man or woman, with rare exceptions,
+chooses a short companion for life. Dark eyes delight in those that are
+light, and _vice-versa_. Everywhere nature seeks diversity, not
+similitude. The gayest and brightest feathered songster craves
+companionship in modest and unobtrusive colors. Diversity is the law of
+life, as equality, or versimilitude, is that of death. Neither natural
+selection, nor sexual selection, runs counter to this law. If Mr. Darwin's
+theory were true, that likes selected likes, then the two marked extremes
+which should have characterized the race, soon after its emergence from
+the semi-human state, should have been giants and pigmies, Gargantuas and
+Lilliputs. Otherwise "sexual selection," as treated by its author, plays
+no intelligible part in the economy of nature, except to counterbalance
+variability, not to propagate it.
+
+But the Darwinian assumption that the primeval man, or his immediate
+ape-like progenitor, came through "natural selection," that is, through
+the "survival of the fittest," is subject to one or two other objections
+which we shall briefly notice. And the first objection is not altogether
+a technical one. The term "fittest," as applied to a monkey, has at once
+a definite and comprehensive significance to us. It implies the presence
+of whatever is most perfect of its kind in the monkey _as_ a monkey, and
+not in the monkey _as_ something else than a monkey. They are all
+admirably adapted for climbing trees; and it is this adaptation that
+secures them safety, or complete immunity, in shelter from their
+enemies. To say that nature selects the fittest for them--for any
+species of monkey--by converting their forefeet into rudimentary hands,
+with a loss of prehension and no corresponding advantages in locomotion,
+is to use language without any appreciable significance to us. We can
+only say that what is fittest for the monkey is ill-fitted for man, and
+the reverse. This is all we can definitely predicate of them, from what
+we know of their anatomical structure, and the diversified uses to which
+it may be put.
+
+The fact is, as the Bible genesis shows, that every living thing is
+perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian
+variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of
+this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of
+Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth
+abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so,
+and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind,
+and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake is
+no less perfect than a Plato or a John Howard.
+
+When we consider man's upright position; the firmness and steadiness with
+which he plants his foot upon the earth; when we examine the mechanism of
+his hand, and the wonderful and almost unlimited range it possesses for
+diversified use; when we see how ill-fitted he is for climbing trees, yet
+how express and admirable for climbing among the stars, even to the
+outermost milky-way, the idea that what is fittest for him is fit for the
+chattering monkey, is too absurd to give us pause. And yet how does Mr.
+Darwin know that the monkey has been climbing up, all these hundred
+thousand or million years, into man, as one of the congenital freaks of
+nature, and not man shambling down into the monkey as a reverse
+congenital freak. Children have sometimes been born with a singular
+resemblance to the ape family, but no ape has ever, to Mr. Darwin's
+knowledge, produced issue more manlike than itself. The divergencies run
+the wrong way to meet the conditions of the development theory. We have
+had nearly five thousand years in which to mark these transitional
+changes, and yet the monkey of to-day is identical with that painted on
+the walls of ancient Meroe. In all this time he has made no advance in
+the genetic relation; and if we turn back the lithographic pages of
+nature for a hundred times five thousand years, we shall find no
+essential departure from aboriginal types.
+
+But the Darwinian hypothesis admits of a more conclusive answer than we
+have yet given. Past time, it will be conceded, is theoretically if not
+actually infinite; and in all past time, nature has been tugging away at
+Mr. Darwin's problem of the "survival of the fittest." It is no two
+hundred and fifty thousand years, nor two hundred and fifty millions, but
+an infinite duration of past time that covers the period in which she has
+been wrestling with this problem. How successfully has she solved it? In
+the Darwinian sense of the term "fittest," she has not so much as stated
+her first equation or extracted the root of her first power. She is
+manifestly as much puzzled over the problem as Mr. Darwin himself. He
+fails to see that the "survival of the fittest," necessarily implies, or
+carries with it, the correlative proposition,--the "non-survival of the
+unfit." And when such a law has been operative for an infinite duration of
+past time, the "unfit," however infinitely distributed at first, should
+have disappeared altogether, many thousands, if not millions, of years
+ago. If the evolutionists are dealing with vast problems, and assigning to
+nature, unlimited factors to express the totality of her unerring
+operations, they must be careful to limit the time in which any one of her
+given labors is to be accomplished. If she makes any progress at all, an
+infinite duration of past time should enable her to complete her work just
+as effectually as an infinite duration of time to come.
+
+But by what law of "natural selection," appertaining to a single pair of
+old world monkeys, have their offspring advanced to this regal state of
+manhood, while all other pairs have remained stationary, or precisely
+where they were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago or more? Why
+this exceptional divergence in the case of a single pair of monkeys? Why
+this anomalous, aberrant, and thoroughly eccentric movement on the part
+of nature? We had supposed that her operations were uniform--conformable
+to fixed laws of movement. The doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"
+implies this. Why then, should nature, in her unerring operations, have
+selected the fittest in respect to a single pair of Catarrhine monkeys,
+and at the same time rejected the fittest in the case of a million other
+pairs? If she had selected only the fittest in respect to this old world
+stock of monkeys, the entire Catarrhine family should have disappeared
+in the next higher or fitter group--a group nowhere to be found in
+geological distribution. The break between man and this Catarrhine
+monkey covers quite a series of links in the genetic vinculum;[37] and
+yet between the two we find no high form of a low type fitting into a
+low form of a high type, as we manifestly should, to account for all the
+diversified changes that must have taken place in the interim. And what
+is true of the types is measurably true of the classes within the types,
+as well as of the orders within the classes. Wide deviations in forms,
+as in characteristics, would seem to be the invariable rule; the
+blending of type into type, except perhaps in remote relationships, is
+nowhere visible.
+
+But if "variation" and "natural selection" have played important parts in
+the economy of nature, why may not "specific creation" have played _its_
+part also? Positive science can hardly flatter itself with the belief that
+it is rolling back the mystery of the universe to a point beyond which
+"specific creation" might not have commenced, or the divine fiat been put
+forth. To believe in the possibility of a rational synthesis, limited to
+sensible experience, or phenomenal facts within our reach, that shall
+climb from law to law, or from concrete fact to abstract conception, until
+it shall reach the _Ultima Thule_ of all law, is to carry the faith of the
+scientist beyond the most transcendental belief of the theologian, and
+make him a greater dupe to his illusions than was ever cloistered in a
+monastery or affected austerity therein as a balm to the flesh. We may
+substitute new dogmatisms for old ones, but we can never postulate a
+principle that shall make the general laws of nature any less mysterious
+than the partial or exceptional, or that shall in the long run, render
+"natural selection" any more comprehensible, or acceptable to the rational
+intuition, than "specific creation." For while one class of scientists is
+climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law
+that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more
+analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by
+divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief
+of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage
+of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the
+human mind is ever towards this abstract conception--this one
+all-encompassing law of the universe. It steadily speculates in this
+direction, and some of the highest triumphs of our age, in physical as
+well as metaphysical science, are measurably due to this tendency. The
+scientific mind is not confined wholly to experimental research. It is
+stimulated to higher contemplations, and is constantly disposed to make
+larger and more comprehensive groupings of analogous facts. It is fast
+coming to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,
+chemical affinity, molecular force, and even Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig, as only so many manifestations or expressions of one and the
+same force in the universe--that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force
+(not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens,
+"binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his
+season, and guides Arcturus with his suns."
+
+It is the boast of the Darwinian systematizers that their development
+theory not only harmonizes with, but admirably supplements and out-rounds
+the grander speculation of Laplace, termed the "Nebular Hypothesis," which
+regards the universe as having originally consisted of uniformly diffused
+matter, filling all space, which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation, much after the manner of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig, into
+an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+space. Of the correctness of this hypothesis it is unnecessary to speak.
+It is to the Darwinian speculation what the infinite is to the
+infinitessimal, and we only refer to it to bring out the vastness of the
+conception as compared to the latter theory, and to predicate thereon the
+more conclusive induction that an Infinite Intelligence directs and
+superintends all.
+
+In an area in the Milky-way not exceeding one-tenth of the moon's disc,
+Mr. Herschel computes the number of stars at not less than twenty
+thousand, with clusters of nebulae lying still beyond. As we know that no
+bodies shining by reflected light could be visible at such enormous
+distances, we are left to conclude that each of these twinkling points is
+a sun, dispensing light and heat to probably as many planets as hold their
+courses about the central orb in our own system. From the superior
+magnitude of many of the stars, as compared with the sun, we may
+reasonably infer that many of these vast sun-systems occupy a much larger
+field in space than our own. This would give an area in space of not less
+than six thousand millions of miles as the field occupied by each of these
+sun-systems. And as the distance between each of these systems and its
+nearest neighbor is probably not less than that of our sun from the
+nearest star, we have the enormous and inconceivable distance of not less
+than nineteen billions of miles separating each one of these twenty
+thousand stars or sun-systems, occupying a space in the heavens apparently
+no bigger than a man's hand. And yet Infinity, as we apprehend the term,
+lies beyond this vast cluster of constellated worlds! Where is Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig in the comparison, or Mr. Emerson's vegetal
+stomach, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's "potential factors," to express the
+sum-total of all this totality,--this gigantic assemblage of stars
+clustered about a single point in the Milky-way? The human mind absolutely
+reels--staggers bewildered and amazed--under the load of conceptions
+imposed by these few twinkling stars, and is ready to exclaim,--
+
+  "Oh, star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
+  To waft us back a message of despair?"
+
+But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible
+in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with
+inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of
+the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how
+unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of _Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig as the author of it all!_ No wonder the inspired Psalmist
+exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
+his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens
+declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the
+immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration
+lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem,
+while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing
+beneath the glebe!
+
+And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre
+of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of
+sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the
+Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding
+all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central
+point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with
+nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must
+be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe,
+to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical
+induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their
+orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why
+not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and
+utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It
+can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it
+has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our
+post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that
+science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not
+Infinite Intelligence accomplish?
+
+But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a
+coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal
+only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize
+quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the
+theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to
+a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in
+climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when
+concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the
+ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G.
+Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also
+insists that when _a priori_ speculation is lost in abstract conceptions,
+the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions of
+consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is
+undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we
+stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if
+in the august presence of Deity itself.
+
+But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of
+consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the
+universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In
+supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of
+Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of
+aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still
+going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or
+energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself
+in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the
+universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential
+energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already
+resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other
+heavenly bodies.[38] All the exterior planets, or a majority of them at
+least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled worlds, or those in
+which all life has hopelessly ceased and become extinct. All has utterly
+disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's couplets,
+
+  "Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,
+  Nor glass can reach--from zoophyte to man."
+
+All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many
+immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science,
+except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe,
+resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent
+clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian
+whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream,
+which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun
+extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless,
+and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+
+Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it!
+Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers,
+and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a
+_credo_ only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable
+the simple faith of the star-led Magi, who
+
+  "Deeming the light that in the east was seen
+       An earnest and a prophecy of rest
+     To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"
+
+came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to
+the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+
+[1]: It may be proper, however, to state that the tenth and concluding
+     chapter was originally written as a lecture, and delivered about a
+     year ago in New Haven, Boston, and at other points. A request for its
+     publication has induced the author to place it in this volume, with
+     the portion referring to the Bible genesis omitted. It will be found
+     germane to the general subject.
+
+[2]: "Without this latent presence of the 'I am,' all modes of existence
+     in the external world flit before us as colored shadows, with no
+     greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of a rock hath in the
+     gliding stream, or the rainbow on the fast-sailing rain
+     storm."--_Coleridge's_ "_Comments on Essays_."
+
+[3]: And science that is not purely inductive--i.e. primarily based on
+     the inviolability of our intuitions--is no science at all, but the
+     sheerest possible speculation.
+
+[4]: This presence of an active living principle in nature, one originally
+     assigned as the "_divina particula aurA|_" of every living thing, is
+     frequently referred to in the higher inspirational moods of our
+     poets. Wordsworth exquisitely refers to it in the following lines of
+     his "Excursion:"--
+
+       "To every form of being is assigned
+       An _active_ principle: howe'er removed
+       From sense and observation, it subsists
+       In all things, in all nature, in the stars
+       Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds;
+       In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
+       That paves the brooks."
+
+[5]: The existence of vital units is conceded by some of the staunchest
+     materialists, such as Herbert Spencer, Professor Bastian and others.
+     Professor Bastian says: "The countless myriads of living units which
+     have been evolved in different ages of the world's history, must, in
+     each period, have given rise to innumerable multitudes of what have
+     been called 'trees of life.'" He insists, however, that they have
+     been "evolved" from something, or by some unknown process. But we
+     shall show further on that a "unit" can neither be _evolved_ nor
+     _involved_, and that this is as true of vital units as of the
+     mathematical or chemical unit. Neither evolution nor involution will
+     ever effect the value of a unit.
+
+[6]: According to Aristotle, the great world-_ordainer_ is the constant
+     world-_sustainer_.
+
+[7]: The definition which Professor Robinson, in his Lexicon of the New
+     Testament, gives of the word IfIEuroI-II1/4I+-, as connected with the "divine
+     life," entirely harmonizes with this view of the subject. He says: Trop.
+     I John 3, 9, IEuroa1/4fI, a1/2 I cubedI muI cubedI muI1/2I.I1/4I-I1/2I?I, a1/4I I"I?I... I'I muI?I... IfIEuroI-II1/4I+- a1/4EuroI...I"I?I1/2 (I'I mua1/2"I1/2) I muI1/2 a3/4I1/2I"a?
+     IEuroI muI1/2I mua1/2 _i.e._ the germ or principle of divine life through which he
+     is begotten of god, I"I? IEuroI1/2I mua1/2'I1/4I+-.
+
+[8]: Professor Schmidt, of the University of Strasburg, who insists that
+     species are only relatively stable, admits that they remain
+     persistent as long as they exist under the same external conditions.
+     Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species. Nor are
+     environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions
+     results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of
+     conditions results in their appearance.
+
+[9]: Says M. Ch. Bonnet, in his "La PalingA(C)uA(C)sie Philosophique;" "Il est
+     de la plus parfaite A(C)vidence que la matiere est susceptible d'une
+     infinitA(C) de mouvemens divers, et de modifications diverses," and this
+     is the universal claim of the materialists.
+
+[10]: Professor Burdach (as trad, par Jourdan), in speaking of the
+      productive power of nature, says, "LimitA(C)e quant Ai l' A(C)tendue de ses
+      manifestations, elle continue toujottrs d' agir pour la conservation
+      de ce qui a A(C)tA(C) crA(C)A(C), et, quoiqu' elle ne maintenue les formes
+      organiques supA(C)rieures que par la seule propagation, il ne rA(C)pugne
+      point au bon sens de penser qu' aujourd' hui encore elle a la
+      puissance de produire les formes infA(C)rieures avec des elA(C)ments
+      hA(C)tA(C)rogA(C)nes, comme elle a crA(C)A(C) originairement tout ce qui possA(C)de l'
+      organisation." This shows that its author believed in the
+      possibility of the "superior organic forms," like the mastodon,
+      megatherium, etc. from the "heterogenetic elements"--those
+      undergoing every conceivable change--as well as the "inferior
+      forms." At all events, it is a legitimate induction from
+      materialistic premises.
+
+[11]: This point is conclusively made by Professor Burdach, who says (we
+      quote from Jourdan); "La tendance interieure Ai la configuration
+      existe avant sa manifestation." And by his _tendance interieure_ he
+      must mean some vital or other law, equivalent to an _entia_ in
+      matter, which results _in_, not _from_ manifestation.
+
+[12]: Goethe borrowed his idea of an archetypal world from Plato and the
+      Eleatic school. They held that the world was originated, and not
+      eternal; that it was framed by the Creator after a perfect
+      archetype, one eternally existing in the divine mind, if not an
+      actual soul-world of which our own is but the reflex.
+
+[13]: In a note to Prof. Bastian's "Beginnings of Life" (vol II. p. 537)
+      an important fact is mentioned as obtained from the writings of Dr.
+      Schneider, to wit, that _Nematoids_ (microscopical forms) may be
+      "obtained at will," almost as readily as mushrooms, by a process
+      entirely independent of spores. For instance, small pieces of beef
+      were carefully examined to see if they contained any of the ova of
+      Nematoids, and, finding none, they were buried in a small quantity
+      of earth (also carefully examined for the presence of Nematoids or
+      their ova) in a gallipot. "After three weeks," says Prof. B. "this
+      earth was found to be absolutely swarming with two kinds of
+      Nematoids--quite different from any forms which I had previously,
+      seen, although I had been seeking them for more than two years
+      previously in all sorts of situations." The reason why he had not
+      found them previously, was because the "necessary conditions" for
+      their appearance had not been obtained by him, or he had not sought
+      for them in their proper environment. They were not produced "at
+      will," but were the natural outgrowth of conditions, as much so as
+      the spores of fungi, which make their appearance whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions exist. According to Dr.
+      Gros, it takes about three weeks for these Nematoid forms to develop
+      into a reproductive state.
+
+[14]: The necessity of turning plants and animals into "tramps" is just as
+      great in the case of "Evolution" as in that of "specific creation in
+      pairs." In both cases, we must insist upon geneological
+      consanguinity. For the chances of any two highly specialized forms,
+      originally starting on different lines of divergence, and ultimately
+      reaching individual identity, both in form and characteristics, is
+      an impossible problem in the determination of chances. Consequently,
+      Mr. Darwin finds the necessity of accounting for the presence of
+      northern forms in the southern hemisphere, and the reverse, just as
+      great as in the LinnA|an theory, which was fully accepted by Cuvier.
+
+[15]: Burdach, in his "_TraitA(C) Physiologie" (Trad. par Jourdan_. 1837)
+      says: "Effectivement nous rencontrons des traces de vie dans toute
+      existence quelconque." This is as broad a panspermic statement as
+      can be made, and is only true of inorganic matter so far as
+      vegetable life is concerned, including such infusorial, mycologic,
+      and cryptogamic forms as may lie so near to the "force vegetative"
+      of Needham as to be indistinguishable from it.
+
+[16]: In the case of volcanic islands, the upheavals were undoubtedly
+      accompanied by deposits of mud, sand (ocean detritus), marine
+      vegetation, and more or less animal matter, and these organic
+      substances were washed down by the rains into the broken valleys and
+      plains below, when land vegetation almost immediately made its
+      appearance; not because seeds may have drifted thither by any of the
+      different agencies that have been mentioned, but because organic
+      matter can no more help bringing forth life in some form, when
+      conditions favor, than salt water, when exposed to evaporation, can
+      help crystallizing into its symmetrically-arranged salts. And the
+      same would be true of all the coral islands, bringing up the organic
+      matter of the sea to the influence of the light, the rains, and the
+      dews. The islands thus formed in the Pacific Ocean begin to exhibit
+      vegetable life almost as soon as they make their appearance above
+      the reefs, and a line of sea-beach is formed about them.
+
+[17]: These, while presenting the most varied and diverse forms of
+      infusorial life, are nevertheless the most constant and abundant
+      type. They abound more or less in all organic infusions. Ehrenberg,
+      however, holds that they are no more animal than vegetal forms. They
+      vary in length from 1/15000 to 1/2000 of an inch, and are
+      consequently too minute to be satisfactorily classified in respect
+      to all their diversified characteristics.
+
+[18]: The extent of the southern ice-cap may at least be approximately
+      reached from explorations already made. Capt. Weddell, in 1823,
+      extended his explorations southward to within about 15A deg. of the
+      south pole, where he found an open sea. Capt. Ross, in 1842,
+      approached to within about 13A deg. of the same pole, without serious
+      obstruction. It is true that, in the following year, he encountered
+      ice barriers near the line of the antarctic circle, but they were
+      floating barriers coming down from Weddell's open sea. Capt.
+      Wilkes, in 1840, explored a considerable portion of the Antarctic
+      Continent, lying almost entirely within the antarctic circle. Other
+      explorations have been made, showing that the southern ice-cap does
+      not probably extend, continuously at least, much farther north than
+      78A deg. or 80A deg., or to within some ten or twelve degrees of the south
+      pole, independently of the packs of drifting ice in the otherwise
+      open seas.
+
+[19]: The truth or falsity of "Evolution" depends entirely on the
+      successful solution of this problem, for the chances are
+      quintillions to ones that no two identical forms could have
+      originated from different centres, or from the same centre on
+      divergent lines, and ever reached identically the same results. And
+      how any two forms should happen to be sexually paired, on the same
+      or different lines of divergence, is one of those inexplicable
+      mysteries which must puzzle Herbert Spencer in all his labyrinthian
+      searches into "Force-correlation," "Differentiation," "the Dynamic
+      Force of Molecules," etc., etc. However successful he may be in
+      other directions, he will inevitably fail in this. We must fall back
+      on the grand Old Bible genesis for the solution of this difficulty,
+      where every living thing was commanded to produce seed, or multiply
+      and replenish the waters and the earth with offspring.
+
+[20]: These transcendental or ideal forms may be said to correspond to the
+      "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are the eternal, immutable
+      principles which are discernible to the eye of the soul, as the
+      sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of the
+      body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a
+      higher realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of
+      which the objective reality is but the shadow.
+
+[21]: Herbert Spencer may be quoted as authority on this point. He says:
+      "There is invariably, and necessarily, a conformity between the
+      vital functions of any organism, and the _conditions_ in which it is
+      placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a certain range
+      of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation."
+      And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora, each
+      specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north
+      or south from the thermal equator.
+
+[22]: Speaking of the ultimate principles or elements of matter, Plato is
+      quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with modest diffidence, "God alone,
+      and those whom he loves among men, know what they are." It is only
+      those who seek to eliminate God from the universe that speak with
+      confident flippancy on the subject of molecular machinery and
+      force-correlations.
+
+[23]: As long as the evolutionists cannot agree among themselves as to
+      what constitutes the process of evolution, it can hardly be expected
+      that the public will accept their speculations as conclusive
+      inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to the
+      doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many
+      objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word
+      Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."
+
+[24]: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of
+      God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.
+
+[25]: Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the "Protoplasmic Theory of Life,"
+      says: "Matter cannot change its state of motion or rest without the
+      influence of some force from without. True spontaneity of movement
+      is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what we call dead
+      matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an exciting
+      cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial
+      impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this
+      "force from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle
+      operating to effect the otherwise impossible change in matter.
+
+[26]: A favorite set-phrase of Professor Bastian in speaking of
+      morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes calls them.
+
+[27]: That great and justly celebrated naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of
+      the universal origination of the lower forms of animal life by a
+      process termed, in his time, "spontaneous generation," says: "There
+      are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal and vegetable,
+      which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'molA(C)cules
+      organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a
+      constant succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for
+      some time associated with the AbbA(C) Needham in his experiments in
+      vital directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by
+      no means certain that he did not accept the AbbA(C)'s "force
+      vA(C)gA(C)tative" in place of his more materialistic views respecting
+      "molA(C)cules organiques." At all events, his statement that as many
+      living things appear in nature independently of reproducing causes
+      as by successive generation, is no doubt true.
+
+[28]: M. TrA(C)viranus, who followed Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask
+      experimentations, first noticed the important fact that the
+      animalculA| appearing in different organic infusions, depended on
+      the nature and quality of the infusions themselves, and that the
+      changed conditions of the same infusion produced new and independent
+      forms of life.
+
+[29]: Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet, says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin
+      A(C)toit la religion A(C)ternelle des Essences; parce que tout ce qui
+      existe existoit comme de toute A(C)ternitA(C) comme possible ou en idA(C)e
+      dans l'entendement de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette vA(C)ritA(C) sublime en
+      d'autres termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute EternitA(C)
+      dans l'entendement du SuprAme Architecte. Tou tes les parties de
+      l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome A(C)toient deffinA(C)s dans ce plan.
+      Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux diffA(C)rentes pieces de
+      ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs reprA(C)sentations. Chaque etre y
+      A(C)toit figurA(C) par ses characteres propres: et l'acte par lequel la
+      Souveraine Puissance a rA(C)alisA(C) ce plan, est ce que nous nommons la
+      CrA(C)ation."
+
+[30]: Here is a fact given us by Dr. F. Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a
+      peat meadow in that town, owned by him, which was at no time subject
+      to overflow, a large quantity of peat had been removed at different
+      intervals of time, when the excavations naturally filled with water.
+      In these excavations there appeared not only the _Cyprinidae_ in
+      considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which grew to be as
+      large as those in the most favored streams. They made their
+      appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and
+      have flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow
+      were there any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any
+      other source of water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.
+
+[31]: Professor Beale, in one of his very latest works says: "Of the
+      chemical and physical forms of energy something is known, but of
+      the relationship of the so called _vital_ energy, nothing has
+      been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is
+      altogether different from that which has been traced to physical
+      and chemical energy."
+
+[32]: It is admitted, even in the case of _Bacteria_, whose movements are
+      the most uniform, that they are sometimes so inert and languid as to
+      show no movements at all; while, at other times, they exhibit mere
+      Brownian movements or those no more nearly allied to "life" than the
+      minute particles of carbon escaping from the flame of a kerosene
+      lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists, it is a
+      question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most
+      active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in
+      other words, whether they are _Fungus-spores_ or _Torula_-cells, or
+      whether they may not be some intermediate forms.
+
+[33]: The difficulty of assigning any definitional value to a "primordial
+      germ" is due to the vagueness of idea attached to it in the popular
+      mind, as well as to the diversified theories and speculations of the
+      scientists concerning the origin of life. We can only define it as a
+      "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest conceivable
+      quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical unit."
+
+[34]: Let two comrades be shot at the same instant in battle, the one
+      through the heart, and the other through the arm, shattering it
+      badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from taking a piece of
+      bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart and instantly
+      killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still living?
+      Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He
+      may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts
+      might still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the
+      integrity of the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply
+      because the vital principle that differentiates matter is gone--can
+      no longer act. If the integrity of the bone depended on the action
+      of the molecules, and not on the vital principle, there is no reason
+      why this experiment should not be a success. For the molecules are
+      all there, and their action will not be disturbed for hours after
+      the death of the man shot through the heart.
+
+[35]: It is safe to adhere to the Leibnitzian axiom, _Natura non agit
+      saltatim_.
+
+[36]: One of the most cultured classes of Christian believers in our day,
+      holds that "all life is from the Lord;" that "He is the fountain,
+      and we only the streams thence." And this, they claim, is true of
+      all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to cut off this
+      stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the fountain
+      of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause a
+      mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their
+      intermediates.
+
+[37]: Professor Marsh, of Yale College, has predicted that the "missing
+      link" will be found in Borneo--evidently not crediting Mr. Stanley's
+      statement about its presence in the interior of Africa. But one
+      "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an extensive
+      family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest
+      genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half
+      cover the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey
+      and the man being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the
+      first half of the chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions
+      of links, so to speak. How, then, is the greater length of the
+      plexus to be covered by a single "missing link?" A long line of
+      caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore, in Borneo, and shipped to
+      the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous stretch in the chain of
+      animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for. Borneo must be
+      exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the chasm
+      between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal
+      inhabitants, of that island.
+
+[38]: This daring hypothesis of the materialists is so utterly repugnant
+      to all our ideas of a perfected Cosmos, that we have no patience
+      with those advancing it. It is, at best, speculation run mad, and is
+      based on no other assumption than that of the inherent
+      imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God, or
+      from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast
+      geognostic epochs.
+
+      From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility
+      inevitably runs into the _reductio ad absurdum_. For if, in the play
+      of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past
+      time has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting
+      movements and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite
+      duration of time to come can effect nothing but similarly mutual
+      adjustments and re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an
+      infinity of time, space, matter and motion, everywhere presenting a
+      unity of phenomena in the universe, "there can never be anything,"
+      according to the great Stagirite, "unconnected or out of place, as
+      in a bad tragedy." Conservation must, therefore, be the rule, and
+      desinence the impossible exception.
+
+      But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact
+      of vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly
+      appeared, and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as
+      suddenly disappeared, to show that there are mighty disturbances in
+      the sidereal heavens which entirely negative the idea of
+      "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the phenomena of variable
+      stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and
+      fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and
+      well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of
+      extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of
+      Tycho Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the
+      interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty
+      non-luminous or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their
+      respective centres of light and heat, as the attending planets
+      revolve about the common centre of gravity in our own system. And
+      this is especially true of that vast and fathomless star-stratum,
+      called the Milky-way, in which most of these peculiar phenomena
+      occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.
+
+      That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable
+      transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no
+      matter of wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising
+      that these sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater
+      frequency. This would inevitably be the case if the planes of
+      revolution, in the case of these non-luminous bodies about their
+      central orbs, were coincident with the lines of vision from our own
+      planet--a circumstance by no means improbable from the vastness of
+      the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of stars marching
+      therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be accounted for
+      in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their apparent
+      rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our
+      sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation
+      Hercules at the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of
+      Arcturus' flight), it is impossible to determine, in the present
+      state of astronomical knowledge, whether the apparent change of
+      place in any star is real or merely optical. But, in the case of
+      double stars, each is travelling (independently of its other
+      motions) about the common centre of gravity obtaining in its own
+      system, and these relative movements may account for the greater or
+      less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one, present a
+      greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.
+
+      The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus
+      destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified
+      in our own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With
+      stupendous planetary systems revolving about each of these
+      apparently double stars, they must respectively have a revolution,
+      real as well as apparent, about their own centres of gravity--not
+      one and the same centre, but different and far distant centres.
+      Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with planes of movement at
+      right angles with it, they would necessarily present the appearance
+      of one star revolving about the other--an _apparent_ motion only.
+
+      And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of
+      _temporary_ stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens,
+      flaming up into stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and
+      then disappearing altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or
+      _apparent_ stars, was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its
+      maximum brilliancy at the very first, but gradually diminishing in
+      size until the end of seventeen months, when it disappeared, without
+      change of place, from the heavens. This temporary star was visible
+      in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the Milky-way, within whose swarm of
+      stellar worlds most of these apparent stars have made their
+      appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for this stellar
+      phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed and
+      molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the
+      elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses
+      (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation
+      of "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is
+      manifestly too absurd for scientific recognition. A more
+      satisfactory explanation may be here suggested:--Supposing the
+      apparent relative position of any six or seven stars of the sixth
+      magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed by the combined
+      motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as to throw
+      them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered together
+      as to show their several star-discs as one, we should unquestionably
+      have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as long as
+      this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after
+      another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the
+      combined motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from
+      the first to the second magnitude, and so on until it reached the
+      sixth magnitude, when it would pass beyond the reach of unaided
+      human vision. But as the star of Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at
+      its fullest brilliancy, it may be objected that this suggested
+      theory fails to meet the required conditions.
+
+      As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the
+      Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction
+      of stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a
+      century. We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded
+      stars, in great numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that
+      these temporary stars almost uniformly appear in that zone renders
+      the suggestion here made quite as rational, in the way of
+      speculation at least, as that of "vapory celestial matter" suddenly
+      condensed into a star of the first magnitude, as Sir. William
+      Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not probable.
+
+      Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of
+      stars, lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various
+      parts of the heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance
+      of a star of the fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if
+      more thickly clustered, present that of a star of the first
+      magnitude. But powerful telescopes resolve them into a large number
+      of stars, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth magnitude. One such
+      cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been resolved into not less than
+      fifteen hundred small stars of very low magnitude, and pretty widely
+      scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander Von Humboldt, in
+      speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that "their
+      disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any
+      diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces
+      or in their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too
+      weak too excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no
+      longer see is not necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same
+      time the question of Pliny--"_StellA| an obirent nascerenturve?_"
+
+      But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of
+      these stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There
+      are, for instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant
+      clusters of stars, dark granular spots, of greater or less
+      magnitude, in which the most powerful telescopes show no glints or
+      traces of stars. They are among Humboldt's smaller "fissures or
+      chasms in the heavens," in which he asserts that there is a great
+      paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if one of these thick stellar
+      clusters, which show to the naked eye as a single star, should, by
+      the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system and the stellar
+      group in question, pass into the field of one of these small rents
+      or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of the
+      stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the
+      first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that
+      magnitude so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or
+      fissure. It would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in
+      the clouds of a dark night, and disappear as soon as it had
+      traversed, or apparently traversed, the rift in question. This
+      galactic curtain, it should be borne in mind, is made up of
+      18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less than 720,000,000
+      dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of
+      gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this is
+      unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of
+      the more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch,
+      even in the telescopic field, mere glints of light as the
+      intervening swarms of stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the
+      foreground and shut out the more distant view. It is only through
+      these rents and fissures in this great galactic curtain that the
+      brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever be seen; and these glints
+      of far distant light, showing dimly through this curtain, may
+      account for the peculiar _milky_ appearance of the galaxy, arising
+      from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams themselves. It
+      was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic curtain
+      that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its
+      appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained
+      visible for a period of seventeen months.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
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+Title: Life: Its True Genesis
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+Author: R. W. Wright
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
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+
+<h1>Life: Its True Genesis</h1>
+
+<h2 style="margin-top: .5em">By R. W. Wright</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<p align="center">[Masoretic Hebrew.]--&#x05D0;&#x05B2;&#x05C1;&#x05E9;&#x05B6;&#x05BD;&#x05E8; &#x05D6;&#x05B7;&#x05E8;&#x05B0;&#x05E2;&#x05D5;&#x05C4;&#x05BE;&#x05D1;&#x05B4;&#x05DC; &#x05E2;&#x05B7;&#x05DC;&#x05BE;&#x05D4;&#x05B8;&#x05D0;&#x05B8;&#x0591;&#x05E8;&#x05B6;&#x05E2;&#x05C3;.--</p>
+
+<p align="center">&Omicron;&#x1F57; &tau;&#x1F78; &sigma;&pi;&#x1F73;&rho;&mu;&alpha; &alpha;&#x1F50;&tau;&omicron;&#x1FE6; &#x1F10;&nu; &alpha;&#x1F50;&tau;&#x1FF7; &chi;&alpha;&tau;&#x1F70; &gamma;&#x1F73;&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf; &#x1F10;&pi;&#x1F76; &tau;&#x1FC6;&sigmaf; &gamma;&#x1FC6;&sigmaf;. [Septuagint.]</p>
+
+<p align="center">"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
+upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]</p>
+
+<h3>Second Edition</h3>
+
+<h4>1884</h4>
+
+
+
+<p align="center">RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED<br />
+TO<br />
+ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.<br />
+OF CHESHIRE, CONN.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Contents.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><a href="#pref">Prefatory</a></p>
+
+<p>Chapter I.    <a href="#01">Introductory.</a><br />
+Chapter II. <a href="#02">Life--Its True Genesis.</a><br />
+Chapter III. <a href="#03">Alternations of Forest Growths.</a><br />
+Chapter IV. <a href="#04">The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.</a><br />
+Chapter V. <a href="#05">Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.</a><br />
+Chapter VI. <a href="#06">Distribution and Permanence of Species.</a><br />
+Chapter VII. <a href="#07">What Is Life? Its Various Theories.</a><br />
+Chapter VIII. <a href="#08">Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.</a><br />
+Chapter IX. <a href="#09">Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.</a><br />
+Chapter X. <a href="#10">Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.</a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>Preface to Second Edition.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p>Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
+that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
+thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
+spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
+is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
+the tenth verse:</p>
+
+<p>"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
+thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (<i>the earth</i>) bring forth
+and bud (<i>not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth</i>), that it (<i>the
+earth</i>) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (<i>man being the
+only sower of seed and eater of bread</i>): so shall my Word be (<i>the Word of
+Life</i>) that goeth forth out of my mouth (<i>the mouth of the Lord</i>); it
+shall not return unto me void (<i>i.e., lifeless</i>), but it shall accomplish
+that which I (<i>the Lord Jehovah</i>) please, and it (<i>the living Word</i>) shall
+prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."</p>
+
+<p>This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
+hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
+and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
+come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
+tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
+shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
+and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
+"Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
+nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
+conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
+by the divine fiat.</p>
+
+In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
+this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
+<p>In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
+Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
+history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
+volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
+flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
+on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
+and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
+vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
+as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
+the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
+There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
+in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
+remarkable formula is taken.</p>
+
+<p>We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
+as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
+instead of God, in their philosophical writings.</p>
+
+<p>As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after <i>Truth</i> as it is to be
+found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of
+science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is
+only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no
+foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a
+lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing
+more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to
+accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner
+than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to
+others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following.
+But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with
+being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a
+scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.</p>
+
+<p>When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
+years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
+we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
+for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
+have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
+they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
+referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
+Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
+the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
+toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
+life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
+ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
+nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
+forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
+without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
+to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
+food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
+dead batrachian inside of one year.</p>
+
+<p>This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
+between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
+finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
+riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
+there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
+the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
+these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
+any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.</p>
+
+<p>The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
+Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
+and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
+boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
+force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
+characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
+sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
+the road-sides, and the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> scraped into the centre of the road-beds;
+the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside
+rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break
+the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones
+etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in
+length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that
+they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no
+trace of a mother toad in connection with them.</p>
+
+<p>The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
+early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
+propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
+they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
+any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
+circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
+in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
+appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
+is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
+by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
+made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
+Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
+sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
+taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
+the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.</p>
+
+<p>What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
+almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
+inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
+the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
+where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
+It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
+of the town.</p>
+
+<p>The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
+of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
+in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
+he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
+expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
+on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
+enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
+not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
+blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
+out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common <i>Rana</i>
+family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
+similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
+reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
+apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.</p>
+
+<p>Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet
+into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water
+secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as
+well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they
+wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog,
+originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would
+make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well
+enough as one of the <i>Rana</i> family. It was only to our more intelligent
+neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we
+stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it
+appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are
+equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water
+from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm
+sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting.
+The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing
+their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young
+wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the
+open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch
+out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest
+study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the
+proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable
+modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the
+tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn
+months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to
+ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the
+development of this little pest of the <i>Culex</i> family, independently of
+the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a
+little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the
+netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as
+every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated
+on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into
+a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly
+devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the
+full-fledged mosquito is reached.</p>
+
+<p>All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
+experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
+demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
+covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
+harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
+water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
+their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
+world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
+we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
+Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
+in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
+acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
+the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
+convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
+ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
+may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
+for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
+question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
+now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
+Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
+that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
+have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
+mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
+little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
+knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
+about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
+especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
+knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
+Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
+the same becoming courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
+"Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
+more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.</p>
+
+<p>Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
+other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
+the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
+conspicuously in the historic page.</p>
+
+<p>When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
+frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
+operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
+us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
+batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
+highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
+that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
+earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
+vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
+in the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
+scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
+have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
+diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
+centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
+environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
+living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
+thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
+their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
+pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
+went forth.</p>
+
+<p>As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
+life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
+Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural
+<i>habitat</i> of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that
+the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the
+extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is
+manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the
+common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller
+mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,
+as we have said, a natural <i>habitat</i> for the oyster, and as the salt
+sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long
+thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without
+the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped
+along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will
+be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and
+not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,
+locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale
+the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters
+from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that
+these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing
+conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes
+its appearance.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
+another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
+from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
+nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
+the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
+appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
+previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
+than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
+bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
+will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
+not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
+dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
+of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
+acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
+out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
+and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
+months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
+specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.</p>
+
+<p>Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
+University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
+for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
+as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
+the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
+the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
+in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
+periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
+strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
+text; as, for instance, the <i>Trilobites</i>, occurring so abundantly in what
+is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance,
+whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil,
+characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much
+in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the
+presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of
+the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of
+these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long
+enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked
+the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest
+scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.</p>
+
+<p>All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
+governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "<i>similia
+similibus gignuntur</i>"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains
+universally. The <i>Graptolites</i>, occurring in the bituminous shales of the
+Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to
+which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of
+natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the
+fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible
+teaches us.</p>
+
+<p>When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
+minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
+Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
+rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
+great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
+induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
+he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
+several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
+be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
+Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.</p>
+
+<p>When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
+than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
+true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
+spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
+command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
+of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
+study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
+every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
+amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
+paper on the <i>Arch&aelig;opterix</i>, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a
+case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing
+a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was
+trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every
+one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.</p>
+
+<p>It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
+not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
+have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
+the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
+strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
+upon the Matterhorn!</p>
+
+<p>Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
+be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
+the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
+of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
+least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
+themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
+that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
+the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
+mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
+"Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
+the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
+period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
+physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
+expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
+materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
+and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
+took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
+we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
+which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
+least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
+defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
+Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
+English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
+pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
+Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
+Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
+other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
+twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
+events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
+place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
+unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
+is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
+appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.</p>
+
+<p>When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
+of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
+of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
+institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
+know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
+command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
+not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
+of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
+power of life in matter.</p>
+
+<p>That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
+their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
+asserts they originally came from.</p>
+
+<p>And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
+thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
+earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
+changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
+energy intervene!</p>
+
+<p>"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
+our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
+material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
+his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
+the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
+word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
+sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
+purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
+light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
+with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
+millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!</p>
+
+<p>In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
+the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
+over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
+it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
+takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
+where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
+higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
+dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
+Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
+Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
+of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
+We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
+conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
+for good or for evil.</p>
+
+<p>We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
+our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
+doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
+at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to <i>The
+National Quarterly Review</i>, for the captious manner in which it treated us
+after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
+two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a
+class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and
+enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
+criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
+thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
+several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
+had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
+as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
+handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
+science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
+materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
+the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
+adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
+so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
+respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
+content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
+fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
+waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
+of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
+and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
+Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
+by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
+unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
+demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
+was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
+writer's own face.</p>
+
+<p>But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
+in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
+indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
+our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as <i>The National
+Quarterly Review</i> speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
+friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.</p>
+
+<p>If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
+if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
+for them to regret, and for us to deplore.</p>
+
+<p>To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
+thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
+what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
+thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:</p>
+
+<blockquote>  "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,<br />
+Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow<br />
+With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been<br />
+All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,<br />
+Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain<br />
+The long night through, and wake at early dawn<br />
+To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"</blockquote>
+
+<p>R. W. Wright.</p>
+
+<p>West Cheshier, Conn., <i>Oct</i>. 12, 1883.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="pref"></a>Prefatory.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p>The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
+public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
+introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
+may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
+salutation untouched.</p>
+
+<p>The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
+traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
+and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
+conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: <i>That the
+primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
+things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
+they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions exist</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
+the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
+the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
+The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
+Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
+Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
+biblical and scientific scholar.</p>
+
+<p>In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
+that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
+named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
+we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
+imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
+into the same lines of incidence in human thought.</p>
+
+<p>Science has long taught that the <i>absence</i> of necessary physiological
+conditions results everywhere in the <i>disappearance</i> of vital phenomena;
+by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the <i>presence</i> of
+these necessary conditions results everywhere in the <i>appearance</i> of vital
+phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it
+is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after
+each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand
+years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved
+the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither
+sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have
+anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each
+yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life)
+was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its
+appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural
+seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.</p>
+
+<p>And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
+the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
+forests where pine have been cleared away, and <i>vice versa</i>, in some parts
+of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So
+with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
+over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
+glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
+find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
+without the possible intervention of natural seeds.</p>
+
+<p>The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
+Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
+years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
+undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
+century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
+roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
+them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
+of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
+the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
+points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
+subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.</p>
+
+<p>According to Iren&aelig;us, this Greek version was rendered at the request of
+Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library,
+and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic
+scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed
+upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to
+our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most
+conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis
+of life" we derive therefrom.</p>
+
+<p>&Sigma;&pi;&#x03AD;&rho;&mu;&alpha; (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical
+signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "<i>germ</i> of anything,"
+or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives
+or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of
+"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no
+plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which
+seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more
+comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of
+life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used
+it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms
+&sigma;&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&alpha;&tau;&#x1FFD;&kappa;&omicron;&#x1F76; &gamma;&#x03CC;&gamma;&omicron;&iota; expressing "the <i>laws of generation contained in
+matter</i>"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual
+connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let
+the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
+yielding fruit after his kind, <i>whose germinal principle of life, each in
+itself after its kind, is upon the earth</i>"</p>
+
+<p>We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
+complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
+scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
+Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
+The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
+rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
+development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
+do with the '<i>odium theologicum</i>?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both
+theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
+agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
+scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
+nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
+the Hebrew <i>Hagiographa</i>, of what less value is it to science than if it
+had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
+inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
+science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
+Herbert Spencer?</p>
+
+<p>Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
+all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
+longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
+operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
+speculation to pry. We know what nature <i>does</i>, or may know it by the
+proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
+than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
+the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
+science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
+without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
+an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
+tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
+land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
+bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
+as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
+endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
+requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
+oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
+primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
+organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
+gemmule, thousands of years ago.</p>
+
+<p>He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
+thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
+our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
+theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
+rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
+transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
+<i>mol&eacute;cules organiques</i>, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
+"life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formul&aelig;,
+with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
+or twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
+speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
+and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
+motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
+the public. [<a href="#foot1">1</a>]</p>
+
+<p>R. W. Wright.</p>
+
+<p>West Cheshire, Conn.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>True Genesis.</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="01"></a>Chapter I.</h2>
+
+<h3>Introductory.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
+speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
+tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
+utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
+conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
+prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
+current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
+rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
+more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
+speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
+have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
+substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
+persistent elements in the universe--<i>Matter</i> and <i>Motion</i>. Everything
+else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else
+essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
+theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
+two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
+conclusions respecting matter.</p>
+
+<p>Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
+and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
+claim, of one and the same force in the universe--<i>Motion</i>, With the
+exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
+ever active and reactive agency.</p>
+
+<p>Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
+more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
+or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
+postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
+of molecules.</p>
+
+<p>Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
+Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
+unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
+stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
+special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
+transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
+exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
+its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
+because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
+averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."</p>
+
+<p>And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
+speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
+among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
+last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
+who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
+the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
+as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
+ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
+the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
+dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
+life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
+mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
+of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
+non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
+the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
+beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
+or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
+all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, <i>de
+novo</i>? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly
+allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied
+to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to
+provoke both incredulity and derision.</p>
+
+<p>The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
+professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
+as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
+most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
+of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
+and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
+enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
+laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
+putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
+cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
+dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
+mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
+the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
+nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
+nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
+conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.</p>
+
+<p>But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
+greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
+either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
+logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
+only a negative conclusion shall follow.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.</p>
+
+<p>Life is neither matter nor motion,</p>
+
+<p>Therefore: Life is not indestructible.</p>
+
+<p>This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
+distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
+incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
+neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
+thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
+illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
+that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
+without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
+embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
+have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
+to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
+such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
+realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
+that this conscious <i>ego</i>--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes
+attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the
+order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we
+are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the
+theological conception of a God--the one supreme <i>Ego</i> of the
+universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
+apprehensive intelligence, is derived.</p>
+
+<p>We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
+order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
+constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
+inductions:--</p>
+
+<p>1. Cause must exist before effect.</p>
+
+<p>2. Without some vital principle, therefore, pre&euml;xisting as a cause, there
+can be no life-manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.</p>
+
+<p>4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.</p>
+
+<p>5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
+an effect?</p>
+
+<p>6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
+both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
+incongruent and conflictive judgment.</p>
+
+<p>7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
+whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.</p>
+
+<p>8. Hence Life, either as a pre&euml;xisting cause or vital agency, must precede
+both animal and vegetal organism.
+
+Again:--</p>
+
+<p>9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
+which is produced by an operating cause.</p>
+
+<p>10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
+as an operating cause.</p>
+
+<p>11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
+must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
+cause before there is any produced effect.</p>
+
+<p>12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.</p>
+
+<p>13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
+equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.</p>
+
+<p>And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
+be can no matter without an existing <i>ego</i>, in some state of consciousness
+in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[<a href="#foot2">2</a>] On what,
+therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion,
+except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as
+we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that
+"breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living
+soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.
+All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a
+rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once
+defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
+"materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
+them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
+both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
+potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
+consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
+which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
+that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
+with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
+force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
+God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
+dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
+crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
+resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
+syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
+infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
+successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
+act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
+conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
+world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
+that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
+demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
+admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
+admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
+which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
+laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
+remain as they are.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
+disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the <i>Hagiographa</i>, or "sacred
+writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar
+that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially
+in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and
+inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit
+utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that
+whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle,
+as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the
+latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and
+achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this
+statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more
+important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found
+that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much
+neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key that
+unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging
+between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will
+most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no
+equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
+volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
+be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
+value as in the first chapter of Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
+translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--</p>
+
+<p>1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
+and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
+only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
+Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent
+system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally
+consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence
+"without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying
+inconceivably vast areas in space.</p>
+
+<p>2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
+suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
+of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
+evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
+epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
+"gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
+matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
+universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
+man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
+order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
+and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.</p>
+
+<p>3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
+the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
+great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
+rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
+stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
+for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
+firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
+Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.</p>
+
+<p>4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
+fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
+life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
+distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
+nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
+turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
+was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
+"guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
+this most remarkable genesis.</p>
+
+<p>5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
+which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
+explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
+either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
+and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
+law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
+in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
+would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
+Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
+ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."</p>
+
+<p>6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
+theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
+excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
+earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
+necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
+the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
+occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
+mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
+organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
+hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
+(except man) "after his kind."</p>
+
+<p>But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
+of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
+that of materialistic science:--</p>
+
+<p>THE BIBLE GENESIS.</p>
+
+<p>1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
+Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
+no variableness, neither shadow of turning.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as <i>perfect</i> of its
+kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs,"
+declared to be in themselves upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
+every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
+plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
+field "before it grew."</p>
+
+<p>4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
+bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
+therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
+firmament of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
+every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
+which they appear in geological distribution.</p>
+
+<p>6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
+he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
+every other living creature.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
+life," and he became a "living soul,"</p>
+
+<p>8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
+man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
+the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
+face of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
+man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.</p>
+
+<p>10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
+the angels."</p>
+
+<p>
+THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.</p>
+
+<p>1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
+universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
+myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
+through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
+infinite duration of time to come.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less
+<i>imperfect</i> of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some
+underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual
+development from lower into higher organisms.</p>
+
+<p>3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
+agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
+its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
+at best, only a sort of <i>tertium quid</i> between matter and motion.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
+birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
+progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
+constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
+of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
+gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
+creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
+constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
+organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
+genera, or species.</p>
+
+<p>6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
+respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
+up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
+until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
+thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known
+moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the
+social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree
+only, not in kind.</p>
+
+<p>8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
+purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
+adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
+all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
+indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
+tiger, or they dominion over him.</p>
+
+<p>9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
+expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
+God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
+end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
+become endowed.</p>
+
+<p>10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
+than the apes!</p>
+
+<p>And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
+Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
+conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
+devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
+least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.</p>
+
+<p>But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
+as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
+represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
+implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
+<i>ZRA</i>, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis,
+from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica
+Sacra," first published in 1662:--"<i>Sparsit, asparsit, cum aspersione
+fudit, diffudit</i>," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally
+diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew
+word <i>ZRA</i>. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or
+tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which
+"seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
+is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the
+"<i>diversa diversorum viventium primordia</i>" of Dr. William Harvey, were
+originally implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and
+biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught
+the doctrine expressed in his phrase "<i>omne vivum ex ovo</i>," but that of
+"primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
+in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
+more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
+receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
+into a living organism.</p>
+
+<p>The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
+vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
+from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
+unit--or whether it originates <i>de novo</i>, as the materialists assert, from
+infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
+particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
+hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
+certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
+basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
+indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
+be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
+hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
+necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
+effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
+conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
+trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
+rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
+materialistic dogma, <i>nihil ex nihilo</i>, would necessitate a like induction
+wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is
+manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
+seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
+the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.</p>
+
+<p>The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
+thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
+environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
+environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
+ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
+point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
+back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
+form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
+such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
+the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
+but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
+forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
+or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
+itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
+the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
+conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
+"primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
+whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
+everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
+new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
+wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
+point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
+knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
+theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
+a tiger in an Indian jungle.</p>
+
+<p>Teach us to know what nature <i>does</i>, not what she <i>is</i>; and whatever of
+"divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic
+"Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the
+"myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul
+of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors
+themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their
+inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
+contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
+and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
+because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
+all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
+Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
+machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
+at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
+by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
+will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
+the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
+assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
+speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
+molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
+ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
+to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
+proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
+advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
+connection.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
+growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
+seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
+forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
+domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
+never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
+our position, that the Bible Genesis contains <i>the true key to the mystery
+of life</i>. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be
+reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes
+of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as
+Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial
+bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more
+perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and
+the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the
+more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[<a href="#foot3">3</a>] The emphatic
+statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the
+earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below
+"specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement
+that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions
+favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the
+life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.</p>
+
+<p>And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
+thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
+there is functional activity; while a state, or <i>status</i>, is an incidence
+determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and
+its <i>status</i>--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first
+instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity
+dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply
+the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is
+begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very
+important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What
+this efficient cause <i>is</i>, is a question that awakens no responsive
+inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of
+consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it
+is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will
+ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them
+the first quantitive essence of life itself.</p>
+
+<p>We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
+life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
+their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
+founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
+the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
+<i>animus</i> of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great
+central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual,
+eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all
+religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
+Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India.
+Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective
+blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely assailed and
+overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing
+and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the
+great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the
+slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration
+at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the
+dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room
+for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as
+"the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval
+mist," originally pervading the interplanetary spaces.</p>
+
+<p>We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
+Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
+experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
+purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
+the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
+after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
+investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
+against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
+whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
+"life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
+necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
+are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
+facts only, and the latter entirely on <i>pre</i>conceived and <i>pre</i>judicial
+notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
+objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
+the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
+themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
+potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
+must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
+theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
+God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
+heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
+of the universe:--</p>
+
+<p>  "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
+  Whose body nature is, and God the soul."</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
+science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
+household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
+more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
+dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
+for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
+represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
+the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
+industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
+number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
+gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
+controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
+statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
+scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
+has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
+achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
+science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
+this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
+materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
+why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
+of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
+slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
+more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
+Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
+to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
+refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
+man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.</p>
+
+<p>When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
+much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
+Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
+between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
+and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
+primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
+whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
+arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
+shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
+thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
+maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
+span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
+no daring mortal could ever pass.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
+necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
+construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
+"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
+as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
+would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
+continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
+the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
+manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
+advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
+of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
+organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
+foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
+either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
+this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
+variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
+substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
+differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
+re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
+exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
+potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
+abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
+and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge will never be built.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="02"></a>Chapter II.</h2>
+
+<h3>Life--Its True Genesis.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
+the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
+that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
+celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
+admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
+observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
+that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
+the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
+principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
+force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
+governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
+rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
+instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
+the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
+comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
+upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
+"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
+demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
+way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.</p>
+
+<p>In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
+fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
+the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
+streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
+along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
+wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
+life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
+flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
+spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[<a href="#foot4">4</a>] For like all living
+principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
+primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
+onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
+postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
+correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
+grand comprehensive <i>Datum</i> on which all the objective, as well as
+subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
+upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
+"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
+"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
+Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
+raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
+and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
+up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
+because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
+artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
+handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
+Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
+no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
+undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
+complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
+affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
+spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
+which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
+slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
+travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
+called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
+purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
+Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
+physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
+"Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
+action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
+that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
+as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
+were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
+field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
+opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."</p>
+
+<p>Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
+recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
+the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
+doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
+genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
+renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
+statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
+comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
+the command "to bring forth" was issued:--</p>
+
+<p>1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.</p>
+
+<p>2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, <i>the
+fowl of the air</i>.</p>
+
+<p>3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
+and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.</p>
+
+<p>4. <i>Let us make man in our own image</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
+with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
+Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
+This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
+paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
+crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
+the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
+post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
+life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
+the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
+writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
+origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
+geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
+written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
+Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the <i>Cosmos</i> to escape him,
+would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
+was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
+and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.</p>
+
+<p>But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
+creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
+observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
+appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
+primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
+vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
+of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
+inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
+primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
+inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
+inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
+answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
+decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
+process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
+primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
+declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
+successfully entered upon by the Abb&eacute; Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and
+others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
+co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
+established by inductive methods.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nihil ex nihilo</i> is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as <i>omne
+vivum ex vivo.</i> That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least
+considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some
+vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
+manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
+and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
+greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
+two of a physiological or vital unit? [<a href="#foot5">5</a>] At all events, it is as
+impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other.
+And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible
+Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly
+without verification or proof.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
+the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
+of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
+there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
+vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
+way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
+Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
+vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
+command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
+what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
+Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
+before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
+did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
+conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
+years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
+genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
+metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
+which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
+contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
+should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
+other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
+of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
+science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
+credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
+disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
+interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
+the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
+is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
+conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
+it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
+disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
+distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
+disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
+supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
+formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
+incredibility.</p>
+
+<p>It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
+inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
+we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
+interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
+translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
+--contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
+"mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand <i>questio
+vexata</i> of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of
+all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (<i>i.e.</i>
+each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
+physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
+formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
+hitherto occurring upon our globe.</p>
+
+<p>Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
+Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
+experiments of the renowned Abb&eacute; Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic
+assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by
+whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "<i>molecules
+organiques,</i>" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the
+<i>primordia viventium</i> of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery"
+and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and
+Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever
+spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they
+all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible
+Genesis, <i>and all are explained by them.</i> We say <i>all</i>, with one exception
+only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this
+exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy
+vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He
+who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only
+a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And,
+breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, <i>he became a living soul</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
+without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
+chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
+Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
+yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
+defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
+so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
+awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
+primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
+myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
+the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
+Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because <i>you</i> cannot
+annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
+compass of <i>your</i> brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
+intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at <i>His</i> sovereign and
+commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold
+of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit,
+and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words
+without knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
+It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
+God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
+abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."</p>
+
+<p>What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
+power of God which operates (continuously operates) <i>to impart life to
+inanimate nature.</i>[<a href="#foot6">6</a>] From the connection in which it here stands it means
+this, as in other connections it means the power which operates
+(continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like)
+in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving
+principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary,
+there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative
+now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor
+Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate
+nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its
+operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
+connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
+aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
+animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of
+mind.[<a href="#foot7">7</a>] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature,
+and a part not nature.</p>
+
+<p>Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the <i>ZRA</i>.
+the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
+thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
+own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
+commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
+forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
+first received its <i>baptism of life</i> from God--in other words, derived the
+animating principle of life from the source of all Life.</p>
+
+<p>And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
+Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
+give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
+vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
+to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
+definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
+remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
+idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
+any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
+vegetal and animal life.</p>
+
+<p>St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione natur&aelig; non quseritur
+miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
+Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
+that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
+for all time. But we are not seeking for early and medi&aelig;val authority.
+What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
+such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"
+however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
+our modern scientists.</p>
+
+<p>And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
+definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
+vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
+allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
+living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
+hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
+uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
+to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
+not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
+own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral <i>plexus</i>, and
+Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
+and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
+<i>a priori</i> induction will ever extend this line <i>or plexus</i> to man. The
+developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
+will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
+up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
+his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
+downwards.[<a href="#foot8">8</a>] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
+archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
+and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
+nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
+Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
+and woof of their scientific formul&aelig; respecting life, will never stand
+before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
+thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
+against them.</p>
+
+<p>Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
+life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
+whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
+his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
+this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
+<i>genetrix omnium viventium</i>, or the living <i>mother</i> on whose bosom he
+shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
+beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
+not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
+principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
+forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
+forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
+apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
+and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
+grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
+<i>gramma</i> coveted by his favorite game.</p>
+
+<p>And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
+against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
+to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
+which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
+behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
+will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
+the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
+infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
+But how about the pre&euml;xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
+megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
+period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
+did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
+and we will answer it.</p>
+
+<p>But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
+all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
+matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
+modifications, combinations, etc.,[<a href="#foot9">9</a>] chemically as well as molecularly
+considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a
+mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the
+argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some
+one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.</p>
+
+<p>For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
+etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
+statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
+well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
+some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
+plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
+materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
+conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
+as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
+must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
+some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
+number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
+molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
+possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
+infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
+cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
+occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
+follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
+or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
+Intelligence" of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
+era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
+their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
+more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
+for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
+concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
+possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
+essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
+All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
+an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
+were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
+theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
+or the first fungus-spore. [<a href="#foot10">10</a>]</p>
+
+<p>All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
+both plants and animals have <i>disappeared</i> from the earth for the want of
+the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished.
+What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that they
+originally <i>appeared</i> from the presence of these identical conditions,
+whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have occurred? We put
+this question not simply because the Bible Genesis asserts that "<i>out of
+the ground</i> made the Lord God to grow" every plant of the field "before it
+was in the earth," as well as every herb of the field "before it grew;"
+nor because it declares that their primordial germs are in the earth; nor
+because it speaks of the earth as containing within itself the "animating
+principle of life." But we put it on the irrefragable logic of the
+materialist's own premises and conclusions. They may use other and
+different physiological terms from what we should care to employ, but
+their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force," their "highly
+differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing more than what
+we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital conditions," etc. Their
+preference for the terms they employ, over essential "qualities" or
+"properties" of matter, is entirely due to the obvious invalidity of their
+conclusions, except as their physical theory of life may help them out of
+an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more convenient term on which to
+allege the <i>de novo</i> origin of life--its spontaneous manifestation in
+their experimental flasks--than any vital principle primarily inhering in
+matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to
+validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious
+force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In
+other words, theirs is the fallacy of <i>non causa pro causa,</i> or that
+vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause
+of vital manifestation, and fastens induction where none is legitimately
+inferable. </p>
+
+<p>Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
+that in all life-manifestations there must be some pre&euml;xisting vital force
+or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can
+come into existence.[<a href="#foot11">11</a>] M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that
+organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to
+physical or chemical forces." The Abb&eacute; Needham is satisfied to formulate a
+"force v&eacute;getative," so far as plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably
+falls back on vital force or energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique,"
+which is essentially inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations.
+According to the latter, the whole universe is an "<i>organisme absolu</i>"
+constantly endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all
+conceivable directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
+interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
+theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
+is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
+distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
+For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
+from all vital manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
+of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
+transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
+and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
+conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
+solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
+among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
+of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [<a href="#foot12">12</a>] which
+merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover,
+day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But
+this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's
+speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution
+theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his
+"archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature
+adheres to perfected forms.</p>
+
+<p>Goethe accepts the doctrine of <i>vis centripeta</i>, beyond the influence of
+which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or
+variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
+variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
+inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
+not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned <i>by</i> circumstances
+<i>to</i> circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to
+the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he
+frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We
+should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after the Great
+Architect's pattern, <i>to</i> circumstances, and is only varied <i>by</i>
+circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of variability. For
+the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal pattern, after
+which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals has been
+fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose mind, or
+rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
+archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this
+<i>Archeus</i> pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from
+the mind of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but
+from the one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all
+living things were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that
+world "which," according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that
+is contained sensibly in our world."</p>
+
+<p>This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
+influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
+modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
+types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
+way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
+nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
+then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
+attribute to nature a <i>purpose</i> to modify persistent forms under a law
+that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
+archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
+intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
+type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
+therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
+or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
+predetermining will or agency in the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
+thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
+character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
+before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
+effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
+would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
+itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
+materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
+one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
+reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
+and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
+entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
+ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
+co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
+personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
+obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
+not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
+spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
+fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
+ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
+angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
+worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
+ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
+other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
+machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
+language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
+and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
+majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
+iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
+Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
+two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
+should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
+inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
+screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
+greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.</p>
+
+<p>But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
+science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
+the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
+or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
+words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
+manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="03"></a>Chapter III.</h2>
+
+<h3>Alternations of Forest Growths.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
+alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
+apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
+wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
+been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
+their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
+ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
+satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
+phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
+these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
+scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
+ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
+And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
+of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
+only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
+these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
+lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
+noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
+Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
+question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
+any very important new facts given.</p>
+
+<p>If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
+think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
+collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
+ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
+ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
+implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
+silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
+remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
+themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
+that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
+of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
+further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
+the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
+waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
+with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
+11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
+specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
+this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
+by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
+but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
+and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
+determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
+genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.</p>
+
+<p>Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
+treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
+to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
+species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
+the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
+over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
+centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
+belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
+again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
+have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
+causes; but, in many instances, <i>this explanation is not probable</i>." It is
+manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this connection,
+in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed" any other
+germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits that, in many
+instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the dissemination of
+seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the exploded notion that
+vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous instances where seeds
+have grown after lying dormant for ages in the earth." He further says, in
+the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while
+they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he
+is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain
+for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that
+they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether.
+But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of
+ancient Egyptian cereals, which are sometimes hawked about the country for
+two and three dollars a seed, and, in the same breath, accept the absurder
+theory that seeds may lie dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and
+most enduring woods will utterly perish and disappear in a few brief
+years, is wholly inexplicable to us, except as an hypothesis to force a
+conclusion, or to account for the otherwise unaccountable alternations of
+forest growths.</p>
+
+<p>But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
+seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
+entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would
+be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and
+other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr.
+Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by
+actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and
+thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils
+below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach
+them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may
+answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a
+nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the
+indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a
+like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly
+be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light
+of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are
+speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed
+that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such
+exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast
+into the fire and consumed to ashes.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
+the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
+brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
+entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
+in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
+remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
+calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
+and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
+rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
+burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
+found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
+Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
+waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
+which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
+Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
+Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
+depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
+must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
+brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
+wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
+did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
+species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
+us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
+microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
+any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
+examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
+large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
+But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
+the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
+seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
+this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
+newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
+is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
+sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.</p>
+
+<p>It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
+hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
+neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
+oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
+entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
+the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
+while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
+"germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
+growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
+in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
+natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
+the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
+natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
+"vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
+"the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
+has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
+instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
+implicitly followed since.</p>
+
+<p>In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
+York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
+Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
+growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
+ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
+the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
+trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
+poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
+spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
+tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
+fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
+replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
+supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
+not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
+altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
+tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
+and growth.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
+communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
+fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
+1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
+oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
+propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
+too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
+special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
+immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
+natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."</p>
+
+<p>In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
+storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
+was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
+that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
+"had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
+prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
+neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
+nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
+promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
+unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
+season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.</p>
+
+<p>In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
+the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
+before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
+alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and
+through forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was
+possible that their seeds could have been derived. One of these
+tornadoes the writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South
+Alabama, and he is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that
+the instances are rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean
+path of a tornado, through any of our primitive forests, has been
+succeeded by the same growth of timber as that borne down by the winds.
+Where the path of this ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine
+forest, a clean growth of oak was buttressed on either side by pine;
+and <i>vice versa</i>, where it swept an oak forest. And it is certain that
+the tornado, whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such
+discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine
+growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific
+theory or balk an unscientific one.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
+years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
+was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
+been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
+had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
+taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
+deciduous, and <i>vice versa.</i> We have any number of well authenticated
+facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
+place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
+which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
+swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
+without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (<i>Larix Americana</i>) may
+be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by
+the balsam fir (<i>Abies balsamea</i>), which may be probably caused by the
+partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree
+that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a
+period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
+extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
+state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
+manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
+soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
+accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
+for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
+that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
+considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
+granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
+in the interest of speculative parties.</p>
+
+<p>But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
+found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
+country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
+swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
+artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
+appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
+latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
+the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
+for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
+in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
+growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
+the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
+growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
+favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
+swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
+nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
+the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
+all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
+Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
+all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
+the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
+of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
+Bible genesis nowhere affirms.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
+Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
+dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
+the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
+evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
+growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
+"seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
+stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
+the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
+genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
+locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
+his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
+conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.</p>
+
+<p>He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
+practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
+philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
+rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
+fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
+adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
+by an oak forest, <i>where there were a few oaks previously scattered
+through the woods to furnish seed.</i>" This is a very cautious, as well as
+circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had
+his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor
+Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through
+the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into
+account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one.
+They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a
+proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His
+anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a
+pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify
+him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement
+as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of
+Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have
+found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the
+intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the
+localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have
+been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the
+shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No
+squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get hickory nuts, and
+few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and thinner-shelled walnuts
+are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is provident, but no more so
+than he is fastidious in the choice of his food. He never plants acorns
+except for his own gratification, and is never gratified with indifferent
+food so long as he can command that which is to his liking.</p>
+
+<p>In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
+necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
+inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
+indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
+fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
+correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded <i>by a
+spontaneous growth of trees of another kind.</i>" In the sense in which he
+manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
+might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
+that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
+seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the <i>Acer</i> family
+excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
+a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
+chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
+A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
+accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
+tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
+nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
+generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
+we advance in this work.</p>
+
+<p>Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
+unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
+operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
+adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
+in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
+called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
+almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
+Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
+is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
+spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
+mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
+following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
+places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
+etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
+expressed at the asking of the question."</p>
+
+<p>These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
+Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
+for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
+conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
+They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
+the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
+"spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
+with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
+meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
+conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
+trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
+lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
+facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
+presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
+to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
+distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
+native forest from which seed could have been derived.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
+town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
+had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
+"yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, <i>where there was not a
+single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the
+place</i>." Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white
+pine, of which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory."
+He is greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
+readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
+by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
+Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
+them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
+caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
+might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
+grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
+provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
+locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
+have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
+and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
+Bible genesis.</p>
+
+<p>While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
+imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
+cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
+within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
+vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
+any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
+at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
+and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
+germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
+that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
+nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
+inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
+years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
+so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
+hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
+old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
+stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
+were laid.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
+few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
+well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
+which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
+vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
+on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago
+(<i>circiter</i> 1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding
+region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my
+grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It
+contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As
+the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this
+ground there sprang up a grove of white pines, covering the field and
+retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a
+single oak or chestnut tree;" and he adds, "<i>there was not a single pine
+whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to
+have been planted on this spot</i>." He supposes, however, that the "seeds"
+(pine cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought
+them up "within the limits of vegetation."</p>
+
+<p>As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
+that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
+and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
+forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
+covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
+Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
+the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
+idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
+with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
+time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
+fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
+oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
+many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
+the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
+succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
+hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
+that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
+intervals among the larger deciduous trees.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
+that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
+gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
+once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
+where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
+which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
+of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
+different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps,
+<i>vice versa</i>. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a
+brief summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of
+the country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less
+well-informed on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says
+that in the region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871,
+"dense growths of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing
+rapidly;" but he omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to
+state the previous growths of timber, or whether there were any
+neighboring growths of poplar along the track of the burnt district from
+which seed might have been derived.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some of his more important statements:--</p>
+
+<p>"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
+up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."</p>
+
+<p>"At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
+deciduous trees, and <i>vice versa</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
+oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."</p>
+
+<p>"In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."</p>
+
+<p>"In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
+maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
+more of the last named than any other."</p>
+
+<p>This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
+simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
+that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
+"Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
+really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
+suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
+surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
+the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
+neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
+forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
+physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
+proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
+be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
+countries of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
+New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
+the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
+pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
+without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
+absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
+soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
+ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
+and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
+the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
+often see a hazel coppice; after a time the crat&aelig;gus, and finally the
+oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
+aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
+the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
+of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.</p>
+
+<p>He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
+timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
+from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
+Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
+wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
+immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
+noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
+very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
+pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
+produce nothing but poplars, <i>where none of that species of tree was
+previously to be found"</i>. But facts of a similar character are too
+numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
+authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
+germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
+appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
+them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
+passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
+circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
+plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
+occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
+physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.</p>
+
+<p>There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
+a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
+forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
+areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
+yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
+the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
+ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
+after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
+been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
+whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
+tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
+forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
+indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
+specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
+genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
+others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
+theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
+growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
+confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
+scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
+pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
+effectually turned on the sneerer.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
+singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
+appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
+which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
+this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
+disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
+value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
+were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
+earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
+And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
+conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
+were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
+units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
+circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
+all candid and impartial readers will agree.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
+theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
+that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
+meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
+position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
+to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
+little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
+will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
+had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
+hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
+vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
+is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
+only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed,
+<i>but twelve species of plants </i> (not including grasses and sedges)
+flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."
+
+The attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
+meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
+by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
+in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
+their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
+fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
+soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
+of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
+their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
+changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
+England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
+the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
+open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
+aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
+for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
+seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
+beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
+for their more successful growth.</p>
+
+<p>No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
+centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
+obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
+bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
+obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
+she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
+eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
+guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But
+forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up
+in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages,
+or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the
+butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
+dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
+all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
+mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
+to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
+mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
+her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
+command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
+expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
+implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
+seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
+them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
+that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
+language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--</p>
+
+<blockquote>      "Nature never lends<br />
+The smallest scruple of her excellence,<br />
+But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines<br />
+Herself the glory of a creditor--<br />
+<i>Both thanks and use</i>."</blockquote>
+
+<p>Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
+of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
+never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
+glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
+seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
+bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
+and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
+legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
+breast, and her "copy is eterne."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="04"></a>Chapter IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
+of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
+place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
+unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
+trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
+insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
+plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
+explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
+small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
+which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
+provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
+these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
+in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
+coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
+may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
+plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
+until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
+scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
+to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
+have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
+when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
+vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
+conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
+fact, it remains wholly unsolved.</p>
+
+<p>This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we
+have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific
+path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on
+vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our
+cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the
+"ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in
+which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all
+their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are
+the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of
+storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of
+storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed
+back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it
+may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself.
+For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much
+more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned
+to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it
+quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from
+the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed
+mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.</p>
+
+<p>The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
+nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
+thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
+the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
+belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
+former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
+to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
+least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
+their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
+these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
+after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
+fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
+circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
+had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
+merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
+when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
+no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
+exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
+protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
+whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
+chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
+Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.</p>
+
+<p>Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
+Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
+remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
+admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
+on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
+he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
+implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
+wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
+"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
+says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
+which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
+the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
+or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
+for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
+exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
+with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
+show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
+dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
+erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
+may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
+than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
+dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
+this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
+erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
+household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
+they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they <i>do</i>
+follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.</p>
+
+<p>The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
+"Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
+indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
+extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
+after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
+Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
+together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
+at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
+lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
+connected with the case was, that <i>the raspberry seeds were recovered from
+the stomach</i> (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society,
+where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
+circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
+provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
+the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
+conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
+would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.</p>
+
+<p>But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
+comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
+years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
+raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
+Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
+kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
+were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
+one." This statement must be received <i>cum grano</i>. The Romans never used
+coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a
+battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
+was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
+taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
+might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
+soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
+very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
+particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
+the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
+posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
+for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
+that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
+recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
+the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
+well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
+in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."</p>
+
+<p>All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
+about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
+record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
+stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
+seeds, as well as the <i>obolus</i> in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be
+found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had
+withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the
+surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have
+obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for
+belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."</p>
+
+<p>From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
+mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
+England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
+of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
+not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
+case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
+distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
+discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
+tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
+soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
+"Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
+there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
+buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
+other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
+wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
+wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
+trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
+or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
+bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
+of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
+seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
+of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
+alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
+fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
+circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
+the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is <i>Erechthites
+hieracifolia</i>, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its
+seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is
+not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds,
+and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
+survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
+burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
+any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
+heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
+of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
+no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
+their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
+seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
+those <i>grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
+southern hemisphere</i>, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in
+which they so promptly make their appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
+deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
+heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
+growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
+the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
+two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
+from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
+to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
+only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
+a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
+must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
+its place.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
+nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of
+the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil
+where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but
+from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those
+taking advantage of environing conditions, just as <i>Bacteria</i> or
+<i>Torultz</i> spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots
+of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring
+directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living
+organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable
+depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the
+burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when
+there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from
+the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken
+their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural
+"gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account
+for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick
+bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in
+this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when
+white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds
+of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing
+in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any
+length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that
+when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are
+effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie
+grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and
+the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No
+seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found
+had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most
+powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make
+their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation
+did on the earth, not from seed, but from pre&euml;xisting vital units or
+primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
+necessary conditions for their development and growth.</p>
+
+<p>The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
+explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
+to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
+no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
+generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
+seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
+impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
+seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
+thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
+eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
+gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
+the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
+gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
+utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
+corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
+involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
+power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
+seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
+natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
+macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
+gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
+pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
+gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
+outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
+passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
+pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
+appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
+observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
+slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
+the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.</p>
+
+<p>The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
+they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
+hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
+the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
+small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
+and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
+some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
+otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
+even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
+bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
+length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
+have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
+character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
+mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
+comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
+have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
+crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
+crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
+fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
+bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
+Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
+chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
+than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
+digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
+"natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
+"the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
+loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
+of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
+relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
+without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
+transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
+number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
+of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
+as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.</p>
+
+<p>Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
+other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
+have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
+mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
+dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
+this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
+agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
+well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
+given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
+or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
+seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
+late civil war, a little leguminous plant (<i>Lespedeza striata</i>) sprang
+up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it
+came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of
+the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage
+plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this
+plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the
+phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities
+in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general
+appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not
+particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one
+southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they
+naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in
+those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not
+abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had
+the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive
+legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.</p>
+
+<p>It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
+suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
+as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
+been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
+southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
+prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
+to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
+and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
+South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
+it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
+thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
+war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
+vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
+in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
+South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
+Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
+states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
+winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
+quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
+wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
+plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
+favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
+organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
+their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
+on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
+examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
+the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
+life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
+have named.</p>
+
+<p>This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
+"conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
+soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates,"
+"<i>molecules organiques</i>," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
+life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
+theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
+developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
+dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
+conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
+of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
+only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
+"molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
+from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
+two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
+with matter--<i>molar</i> motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass,
+and <i>molecular</i> motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its
+unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.</p>
+
+<p>But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
+collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
+mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
+accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
+other words, it is simply a <i>process</i> or <i>mode</i> of action, and stands in
+about the same relation to matter as <i>growth</i> does to a living plant or
+tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
+subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
+indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
+additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
+"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
+it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
+it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
+motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
+both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
+less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
+having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
+moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
+matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
+co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
+physical hypothesis of life.</p>
+
+<p>But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
+local fern (<i>Schizoea pusilla</i>) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
+affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
+of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
+at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
+ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
+ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
+Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
+south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
+north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
+appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
+thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
+the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
+half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
+will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
+of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
+known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
+not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
+hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
+vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
+high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
+another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
+respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
+the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
+mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
+governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
+manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
+globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
+appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for <i>Bacteria</i> in
+the blood, <i>Torul&aelig;</i> in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological
+cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable
+"unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant
+forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of
+centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of
+affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis,
+because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but
+let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational
+life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force,"
+or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable
+to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they
+absurdly use these terms.</p>
+
+<p>It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
+question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
+seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
+theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
+east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
+respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
+this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
+the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
+changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
+theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
+directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
+plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
+"war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
+relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
+and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
+causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
+mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
+habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
+reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
+vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
+common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
+must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
+compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
+conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
+shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
+vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
+been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
+climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
+localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
+growth of local vegetations.</p>
+
+<p>And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
+seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
+regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
+these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
+vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
+units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
+determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
+resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
+seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
+as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
+given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
+not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
+chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
+likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
+any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
+of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
+soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
+judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
+failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
+experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
+subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
+less useful to man.</p>
+
+<p>But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
+As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
+nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
+out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
+of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
+no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
+life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
+inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
+fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
+they <i>might</i> produce life <i>de novo</i>.[<a href="#foot13">13</a>] But the most daring physicist
+would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his
+knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to
+"molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon
+such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
+in the appearance and geographical distribution of <i>fungi</i>, as universally
+obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it
+may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between
+certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive
+manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in
+assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
+fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
+classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
+as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
+other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
+necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
+essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
+Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
+obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
+form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
+make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
+them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
+about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
+necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
+development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
+burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
+to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
+commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
+part of them flourish on different decaying substances.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
+moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
+which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
+found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
+certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
+of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
+their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
+from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
+nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
+from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
+grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
+disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
+and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
+disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
+mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
+develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
+To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
+different species of <i>Mucor</i>, for instance--for disgusting offal over
+decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
+degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
+creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.</p>
+
+<p>We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
+testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
+etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
+of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
+spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
+go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
+apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
+depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
+beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
+select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
+the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
+direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
+conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
+environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
+atmosphere--the "<i>pater omnipotens &AElig;ther</i>" of Virgil, "descending into the
+bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great
+himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things
+of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that
+myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a
+cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the
+poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father &AElig;ther," and the earth as
+his "joyous spouse." But life, with its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and
+swift," has reached its highest conceptions in the mind of the poet, not
+in the speculations of the scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from
+many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a
+Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass,
+staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a
+Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of
+"molecular machinery" by the scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its
+manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe
+of all-potential matter and motion!</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
+spores of the large puff-ball (<i>Lycoperdon giganteum</i>), as well as those
+of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose methods
+of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced artificially. But
+the process by which their production is thus effected, is more properly a
+natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says
+(quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and
+fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse
+of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue
+productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they
+cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these cases, but the
+conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded by the branches
+of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became favorable for the
+development of truffle "germs," and they made their appearance just as
+mushrooms do in caves and other places, where artificial beds are made and
+chemically balanced for their development and growth. And the reason why
+they disappeared, after a period of ten or fifteen years, was simply
+because the proper nutriment of the soil was exhausted, and not in
+consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the growing trees. One
+uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of this much-coveted
+fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions obtain, they
+<i>appear</i>, and wherever these conditions fail, they <i>disappear</i>,
+notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
+soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
+truffle (<i>Tuber &aelig;stivum</i>) appears under beech trees, another form (<i>Tuber
+macrosporum</i>) under oak trees, and still a third form (<i>Tuber brumale</i>)
+under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change in soil
+conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among oaks,
+produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
+amounting to a specific difference in variety.</p>
+
+<p>The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
+one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
+horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
+cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
+over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
+time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
+ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
+governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
+whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
+In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
+come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
+its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
+the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
+as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
+Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
+in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
+seen by the required telescope.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
+says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
+dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
+plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
+early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
+summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
+the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
+to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
+of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
+were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
+era. These primordial germs, or the <i>ZRA</i> of the Bible genesis, must have
+preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
+spore-bearing cryptogam.</p>
+
+<p>M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
+great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
+at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
+oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
+conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
+oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
+All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
+connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
+the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
+all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
+development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
+fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
+connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
+case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
+remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
+micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
+parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
+from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
+parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
+occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
+than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
+springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
+spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
+endowed from the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
+seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
+could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
+produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
+distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
+stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the <i>first</i>
+fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
+divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
+mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
+we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
+comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
+depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
+of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
+condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, <i>Nature</i>, as we
+half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
+solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
+ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
+radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
+baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
+idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
+choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
+field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
+her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
+breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
+proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
+life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
+soul-endowed man.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="05"></a>Chapter V.</h2>
+
+<h3>Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S.
+etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of
+Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856,
+on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding
+Food," are the following:--</p>
+
+<p>1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its
+absolute creation, of which we know nothing.</p>
+
+<p>2. "But we assume each species to have been <i>created but once in time and
+in place</i>, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own law of
+reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws
+external to it.[<a href="#foot14">14</a>]</p>
+
+<p>3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate,
+since <i>any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but always
+fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc</i>.,</p>
+
+<p>4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates
+distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the
+heating rays."</p>
+
+<p>There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average
+rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in
+the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the
+hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several
+localities in which the different species of vegetation make their
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific
+creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount
+value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and
+restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from
+the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs.
+"Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or
+restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to
+doubt that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now,
+in nature.</p>
+
+<p>The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created
+at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds,
+is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or
+scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an
+experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first
+bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste
+over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants
+peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance,
+not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have
+nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because
+a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from
+the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we
+have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man,
+artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of
+plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did
+millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of
+these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of
+progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified
+offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original
+ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical
+faith, but never of experimental proof. "<i>Entia non sunt multiplicanda
+pr&aelig;ter necessitatem</i>" is an old and well-approved maxim, applicable alike
+to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the innumerable
+crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is produced
+without the necessary conditions on which its production depends.
+"Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest
+meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course
+of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and
+animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements.
+As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of
+development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without
+which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological
+sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and
+inevitably produced.[<a href="#foot15">15</a>] And this law is just as dependent on necessary
+vital conditions as vital manifestations are dependent on a physiological
+law. There must always be this reciprocal dependence and relationship
+between conditioning causes and effects. Whenever and wherever the
+necessary vital conditions exist, the physiological law takes effect, and
+the requisite vital manifestation is witnessed. And this is no doubt as
+true of animal as of vegetable life.</p>
+
+<p>The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of
+which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora.
+Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;</p>
+
+<pre>  1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from  0&deg; to 15&deg;.
+  2. " Tropical       "      "         " 15&deg; "  23&deg;.
+  3. " Sub-tropical   "      "         " 23&deg; "  34&deg;.
+  4. " Warm Temperate "      "         " 34&deg; "  45&deg;.
+  5. " Cold           "      "         " 45&deg; "  58&deg;.
+  6. " Sub-arctic     "      "         " 58&deg; "  66&deg;.
+  7. " Arctic         "      "         " 66&deg; "  72&deg;.
+  8. " Polar          "      "         " 72&deg; "  82&deg;.</pre>
+
+<p>These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with
+reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like
+division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems,
+extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our
+equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at
+their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they
+respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the
+next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we
+ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak
+of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the
+elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm
+temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all
+latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant
+life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted
+for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances,
+modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the
+highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight
+exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that
+the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should
+hereafter be extended.</p>
+
+<p>Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation
+quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical
+mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate
+zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer
+classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are
+marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey
+gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant
+zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of
+plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind
+can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these
+statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the
+different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of
+vegetation peculiar to each of them.</p>
+
+<p>The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance
+in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein,
+and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could
+only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other
+conditions of that extensive zone.</p>
+
+<p>The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are
+characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while
+retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less
+rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are
+peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and
+most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do
+not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in
+both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain
+systems within the equatorial regions.</p>
+
+<p>The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and
+general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc.,
+exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a
+greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery
+and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels,
+and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these
+zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.</p>
+
+<p>The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of
+the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the
+other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and
+plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the
+corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of
+deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths,
+cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked
+characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent
+grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more
+extensively into varieties.</p>
+
+<p>The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm
+temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency
+is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are
+more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also
+abundant in grasses.</p>
+
+<p>The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social
+conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe
+and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is
+sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering
+herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.</p>
+
+<p>The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation
+generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.</p>
+
+<p>The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be
+entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most
+extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire
+vegetation.</p>
+
+<p>There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting
+plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the
+elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may
+appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.</p>
+
+<p>From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested
+on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before
+answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions <i>have</i>
+been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the
+distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on
+climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and
+isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one
+important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that
+of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but
+once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of
+its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences
+of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original
+plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and
+that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts
+of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones
+where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they
+attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than
+satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as
+reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray,
+in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work
+Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he
+was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not
+take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication,
+the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the
+individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."</p>
+
+<p>And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his
+associate's observations, in considering the very point here under
+consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his
+idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in
+individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in
+discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view
+is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with
+the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of
+accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or
+animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their
+appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and
+under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions
+favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these
+conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its
+appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but
+simply the presence of "conditions"--the <i>pro</i>vision of man harmonizing
+with the <i>pre</i>vision of nature. In the same way the "Japan clover" made
+its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over the southern
+states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of plants, but
+the presence of natural conditions.[<a href="#foot16">16</a>]</p>
+
+<p>The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be
+arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general
+facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly
+to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and
+not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast
+intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others
+would require us to believe. Take the case of the <i>Schizoea pusilla</i> of
+the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing in
+similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their
+antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this
+plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long
+time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that
+it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to
+New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these
+"specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would
+have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both
+localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored;
+and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the
+fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formul&aelig;,
+must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite
+child of nature" that she condescended to create it <i>twice</i> "in time and
+place," instead of only <i>once</i>. It is a poor rule, they may say, that has
+no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief
+in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more
+rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high
+authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine
+currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have
+played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even
+across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the
+appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of
+miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than
+the presence of <i>Bacteria</i> or <i>Torul&aelig;</i>[<a href="#foot17">17</a>] in different organic
+infusions? If the vital units of these <i>infusori&aelig;</i>, are present in
+experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually admits, why may not
+the vital germs or units of this <i>Schizoea pusilla</i> have made their
+appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand and New Jersey, at
+the same or different periods of time? If Professor Gray regards the
+microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical forms in
+inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of nature,
+then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove that
+these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which she
+has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the
+question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of
+argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly
+operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation
+not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and
+hence not supernatural.</p>
+
+<p>But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are
+led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the
+sub-arctic zone, and <i>vice-versa,</i> and even beyond the equator to the
+sub-antarctic zone, and still <i>vice versa</i>. Before proceeding to consider
+the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called glacial
+periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or considering
+the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state their position
+in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and concisely as we know
+how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the generally accepted one
+of the evolutionists, as well as most of the present scientific world. As
+the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet theory of evolution depended
+on the satisfactory solution of this vexed problem, it became necessary
+for him to give his best and entire mental energies to the gigantic task
+which was, by universal consent, assigned him. The reader shall see how
+admirably the thermal equator is crossed by Mr. Darwin, with his vast
+swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and other plants, forest trees,
+anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild animals, such as would
+gladden the heart of the "great American showman" beyond the most
+extravagant comparison.</p>
+
+<p>The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve,
+was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and
+cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the
+corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was
+any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of
+how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will
+give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be
+charged with misrepresentation.</p>
+
+<p>He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and
+more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions;
+and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of
+the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the
+equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot
+lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and
+sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this
+period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres
+gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living
+on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former
+homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms
+returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms
+would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if
+sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms
+on the mountains of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>"In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its
+turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere
+rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the
+equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the
+mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These
+latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes,
+leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with
+them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their
+mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the
+same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of
+the intermediate tropical regions."</p>
+
+<p>We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for
+plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us
+in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure,
+even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.</p>
+
+<p>But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the
+strength of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr.
+Darwin must rest:--</p>
+
+<p>1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial
+epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however
+few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the
+maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.</p>
+
+<p>2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the
+sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a
+constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface,
+being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion
+or perihelion.</p>
+
+<p>3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the
+earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any
+glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not
+altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time,
+and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends
+continuously and permanently much farther north than 80&deg; or 81&deg;. Mt.
+Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only a
+few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was
+traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some
+ten or twelve degrees further north. [<a href="#foot18">18</a>]</p>
+
+<p>5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75&deg;,
+what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the
+north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope,
+below 60&deg;, a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The utmost
+limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time,"
+conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to
+55&deg;, or about the northern boundary of England.</p>
+
+<p>Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes
+of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further
+south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the
+sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking
+of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an
+ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that
+the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to
+the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a
+moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during
+the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this
+continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude.
+Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only
+push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm
+temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the
+Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of
+Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less,
+when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the
+isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been
+the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape
+the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have
+flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the
+Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded
+through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation,
+that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our
+northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.</p>
+
+<p>For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern
+ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll
+has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms
+down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme
+northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have
+managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent
+habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent?
+Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it
+ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible
+of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only
+to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these
+forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern
+hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more
+before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that
+distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly
+in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been
+constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must
+accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period
+indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them.
+Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the
+line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more
+years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican
+states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled
+Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central
+American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a
+point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the
+northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the
+universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's
+calculations.</p>
+
+<p>To have accomplished this grand glaciatorial feat the North Pole must have
+donned some twenty times the amount of ice now about both poles of the
+earth, and so changed the earth's centre of gravity as to have inundated
+every foot of land on its habitable surface. But if this terrible
+catastrophy had been avoided, and some of our extreme northern forms had
+forced their way through the Isthmus into the lowlands of Columbia, they
+must have done so at their greatest possible peril, even if they had
+reached the base of Old Mt. Tolima in advance of the thermal equator, now
+fleeing in dismay before the southern Ice-monarch, with all his
+isochimenal hosts in mad pursuit of their invaders. And if these
+adventurous northern forms had succeeded in ascending Mt. Tolima, they
+could never have got down again, with the assistance of forty glaciations.</p>
+
+<p>But we can imagine Mr. Darwin promptly snatching his pen to show the
+stupidity of these northern forms in not climbing Popocatepetl or some
+other lofty mountain in Central America or Mexico, on their retreat before
+the still advancing thermal equator. But how this would have helped them
+to cross the geographical equator, we fail to see. When Mr. Darwin, and
+the eminent corps of geologists and physicists accepting his solution of
+this "vexed question," can make a "warm term" south <i>succeed</i> a "cold
+term" north, we shall have no difficulty in solving the problem ourself.
+But, unfortunately, the two terms--the cold one north and the warm one
+south--are simultaneous in occurrence, and the same causes which forced
+these northern invaders into the tropics, when they followed <i>after</i> the
+thermal equator, would have driven them ignominously back again <i>before</i>
+it. The climbing of mountains would only have prolonged their disaster.
+For after the glaciation north comes the glaciation south, and unless our
+cold temperate zone were pushed down beyond the geographical equator, none
+of its living forms could ever have reached the corresponding zone in the
+southern hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>But as this "migration theory" is one of paramount importance to modern
+science, and especially to "Darwinism," [<a href="#foot19">19</a>] distinctively so called, let
+us, at the risk of repetition and tediousness, propose a scientific
+expedition for the better solution of this problem. To do this, we propose
+to cut loose from our stupid predecessors, the plants and animals, and
+invite Mr. Darwin and some of his more distinguished European
+contemporaries, not omitting Professors Gray, Winchell, Yeomans, and some
+few other American admirers of his, to accompany us on a fresh expedition
+from the warm and cold temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south, <i>purely in the interest of science</i>. To make it certain that the
+time fixed upon for this "expedition" to start, will not escape their
+attention, we will state what many of them already well know, that the
+present eccentricity of the earth's orbit is very low, being only 0.0168,
+and that, in the year of our Lord 851,800, it will reach its next superior
+limit, with a few intervening oscillations of such minimum value as to
+render it hardly worth our while to start before that time.</p>
+
+<p>We shall be obliged, of course to invite our distinguished European party
+to join us on this side of the Atlantic, as their own narrow and
+contracted continent furnishes no proper field for determining the problem
+in question. We shall insist upon one condition only: "<i>That they shall
+never leave the warm temperate zone in which we shall set out on our
+expedition, except to pass halfway into an adjoining zone as is the habit,
+at times, with plants and animals</i>." This condition will have to be
+rigidly observed, otherwise our expedition would be of no scientific value
+to future generations. As we shall have plenty of time to provide the
+necessary outfit, we will appoint Mr. Darwin purveyor-general of the
+party, and hold him responsible for any misadventure.</p>
+
+<p>We will arrange for the expedition to start in the early autumn of the
+year of our Lord 831,800, or about twenty thousand years before the earth
+shall reach its next superior limit of eccentricity,--all of us eager, of
+course, to brave the climatic vicissitudes of the journey, and to solve
+the "great problem of the ages," which is, to determine how the gigantic
+elephantoids of the Eocene period managed to cross the thermal equator,
+and pass into the present arctic regions of our globe.</p>
+
+<p>As "the king never dies," so the old southern Ice-monarch will be
+succeeded by the young northern one, at about the period named. We shall
+then have a decided advantage over our predecessors, the plants and
+animals, in their journey southward, since we shall know the exact route
+they took, and need only follow it. Presumably they had no such
+information, nor had they either chart or compass to guide them,--a
+circumstance which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently taken into account in
+predicating intelligence of his favorite pedestrians. Besides, these
+vegetal and animal forms had one difficulty to encounter which we shall
+not experience. With all the northern forms driven down into the Central
+American states, they must have been sadly crowded for room, especially
+near the Isthmus. The social conifers must have monopolized all the more
+favored sites on the mountain sides and tops, while the humbler denizens
+of the forest must have contented themselves with still more limited
+quarters. The more impatient animals, for lack of necessary forage, must
+have crowded through the Isthmus only to be driven back by the tropical
+heats to their proper isotherms.</p>
+
+<p>But our warm temperate zone is now moving southward, and our scientific
+expedition is moving with it. The northern Ice-monarch has resumed
+absolute sway, and our aphelion distance from the sun has increased some
+tens millions of miles. We have, in the mean time, moved down to the line
+of the Gulf states, and are deploying to the right in order to make a
+triumphant entry into Mexico. Mr. Darwin is daily consulting the
+isochimenals, and is confident that our northern ice-cap will equal Mr.
+Croll's highest expectations. The news finally reaches us that the Gulf
+stream has turned its course southward, and is now pouring its immense
+treasures of heat into the South Atlantic, if not turning the African
+"horn" and washing the far-off Australian coast. This fact greatly
+increases the enthusiasm of our European party, and they hasten forward
+into the sub-tropical zone, almost "violating conditions" in their haste
+to enter the tropics.</p>
+
+<p>At length, we crowd the narrow passages of the Isthmus, and the glory of a
+warm temperate climate bursts upon our view in the Columbian states, of
+South America. <i>The expedition promises to be an entire success</i>. At
+least, Mr. Darwin thinks so, and he is now the Sir Oracle of our party. We
+deliberately enter the lowlands of Columbia, and make ready to ascend the
+sub-tropical mountains--those formerly equatorial--where the "great
+scientific problem of the ages" is to be demonstrated. But we are
+measuring time by almost <i>Sirius</i> distances, and vast geologic periods
+sweep by without apparent record. The northern ice-cap has been a
+prodigious one, crowding us nearly down to the geographical equator, with
+the advantage we have of appropriating some five and half degrees of the
+sub-tropical zone.</p>
+
+<p>But the year Anno Domini 851,800 finally rolls round, and the maximum of
+the earth's ice-cap is reached. Old Mt. Tolima looms up in the distance,
+and we soon ascertain that its height is sufficient for all scientific
+purposes. Its summit displays a glittering ice-cap, and we are certain to
+find the proper isotherm by climbing its umbrageous sides. We accordingly
+make haste to reach its base, and get there not a minute too soon; for the
+young southern Ice-monarch has stolen a march on the thermal equator, and
+is driving it irresistibly back to its old quarters. His march northward
+is a continuous triumph and ovation up to 55&deg;, and the heart of Patagonia
+is made glad by his near approach. True, the white gates of commerce are
+closed about the Horn; but that is no concern of these wild Patagonians.
+The aggressive Britton is driven out of New Zealand, and that is another
+source of joy to the savage breast. Tasmania would extend a gladder
+welcome than all to the Ice-crowned monarch, but alas, not a drop of
+Tasmanian blood runs in human veins! Cape Good Hope has now a sub-arctic
+climate, and the heart of the wild Kaffir and Zulu rejoices that the
+sceptre of "perfidious Albion" is broken.</p>
+
+<p>The thermal equator at length reaches the base of Mt. Tolima, and hastens
+northward to the Isthmus, and thence to Hondurus and New Guatemala, where,
+by sheer force of exhaustion, it comes to a halt.</p>
+
+<p>But, as the equatorial zone extends fifteen degrees both ways from the
+thermal equator, its southern limit now rests on the geographical equator,
+and accordingly encircles the base of our "mount of refuge." We are now up
+this mountain some sixteen thousand feet above the equatorial lowlands,
+with the sub-tropical, tropical, and equatorial zones between us and the
+possibility of our further migration southward, without violating the
+express conditions imposed at the outset of our expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The fact soon stares us in the face that we have been no more successful,
+in our efforts to cross the thermal equator and pass into high southern
+latitudes, than the stupid plants and animals before us; and Mr Darwin's
+faith in high mountains springing from equatorial lowlands, disappears in
+jest and derision as we all good-humoredly agree "to break conditions,"
+and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and
+New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve
+itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness,
+hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great
+commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of
+exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The
+Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by
+us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the <i>Herald</i>, of the
+date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific
+expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "<i>The Great Wild-Goose
+Chase after the Thermal Equator</i>"--presenting one of the most humorous
+bits of sensational pleasantry ever given to the American public.</p>
+
+<p>But an apology is due the staider reader for the seeming levity of this
+narrative adventure. The exposition of Mr. Darwin, though widely accepted
+on both sides of the Atlantic by the scientific world, has seemed to us
+too trivial for serious reply. If we have leaped over vast periods of
+time, it makes no difference with the argument. So long as the thermal
+equator, or more properly the equatorial zone, or any part of it, lies
+between the warm or cold temperate forms, whether plants or animals, and
+their point of destination in the southern hemisphere, they can never
+migrate thither, any more than the right whale of the arctic seas can swim
+the equatorial oceans. Nothing is gained by going out of the way to climb
+mountains, except to hopelessly retard the return of both plants and
+animals to their native zones. If we have not demonstrated this fact to
+the reader's fullest comprehension, it will be useless for him ever to
+write a Q.E.D. at the end of any proposition.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that some eminent astronomers and physicists hesitate to
+accept the theory that these glacial epochs are due to the eccentricity
+of the earth's orbit. But the argument favoring it is well fortified and
+ably advanced, and if we add to the astronomical considerations involved,
+the physical proofs of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, caused
+by the excessive accumulation of ice about either pole, and the probable
+shifting of the Gulf stream to a southerly direction during the glacial
+period north, it is difficult to resist the conviction that the real
+cause of glaciation has been suggested in this theory. With all the ice
+now accumulated about the south pole transferred to the north pole, it
+would make an ice-cap of over thirty miles in thickness at the pole, and
+one sloping in all directions southward to about 60&deg;. This accumulation,
+it is claimed, would so change the earth's centre of gravity as to cause
+all the equatorial warm waters to flow southward instead of northward, as
+they now do.</p>
+
+<p>This would certainly seem to be a most wonderful provision of nature, as
+well as one strongly calculated to impress the human mind with the belief
+that an Infinite <i>Pre</i>vision lies behind all possible <i>pro</i>vision, whether
+witnessed in the heavens or in the earth, in astronomical or physical
+phenomena. Everywhere we see infinite perfection, combined with infinite
+beneficence, in the adaptation of means to ends. Nothing runs to
+waste--all things are conserved for use.</p>
+
+<p>But in all the outspoken grandeur of the universe, there is nothing so
+grand, in exhibition at least, as the simple faith of a child, that "He
+who watereth the hills from his chambers," and "causeth the day-spring to
+know his place," will watch over the trustful little sleeper during the
+darkness and silence of the night.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="06"></a>Chapter VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>The Distribution and Premanence of Species.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the
+advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while
+remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones,
+says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United
+States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--<i>i.e.</i> Eastern North
+America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference apart, we
+find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our
+distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe,
+thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general
+physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and
+other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all
+the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great
+similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the
+astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity,
+had it been found to exist.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
+plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
+zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
+different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
+and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
+therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
+known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
+all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
+Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
+alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
+States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
+Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
+pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
+correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
+same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
+of all the mountain systems of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
+geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
+objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
+friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
+climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
+that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
+ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
+"coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
+insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
+bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
+the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
+the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
+mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
+as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
+Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
+attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
+hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
+seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon
+these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There
+is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the
+rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the
+lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and
+far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away
+from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be
+chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if
+all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have
+been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross
+the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions
+of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and
+explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of
+plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.</p>
+
+<p>The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the
+explanation wanted. It explains not only <i>why</i> these alpine flora appear
+where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also explains
+all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the foregoing
+chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the earth
+responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine harebell
+is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it wears. And
+so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads and
+sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never grew
+before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang therein
+"its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the black alder
+will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far its current
+may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the supply of
+natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate her as
+"instinct with music and <i>the vital spark</i>."</p>
+
+<p>If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of
+nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert
+that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her
+grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find
+out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to
+accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with
+our chronic neglect of what nature <i>does</i>, is the great scientific
+stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that
+certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from the
+<i>absence</i> of "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the
+reverse of this undeniable proposition, and agree that the <i>presence</i> of
+necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their
+appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal
+law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the
+universe itself?</p>
+
+<p>For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical
+distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British
+Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As
+early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in
+his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in
+connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of
+the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution;
+while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in
+his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in
+Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our
+botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense
+plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have
+given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed
+vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and
+scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of
+any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to
+question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the
+array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon
+the audacious questioner.</p>
+
+<p>But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any
+longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or
+fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never
+meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well
+in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without
+knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many
+superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and
+diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough
+daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice
+them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the
+more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the
+truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional
+grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out
+the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole
+business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a
+delight instead of a burden.</p>
+
+<p>But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown,
+or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come
+from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms
+come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical
+rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent,
+for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that
+all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is
+dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now
+only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his
+"necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all
+animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial
+conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine
+Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in
+the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may
+appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds,
+fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about
+100&deg; C., and that <i>Bacteria, Torul&aelig;</i>, and other infusorial forms, making
+their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from morphological
+cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital organism, but
+from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere present in the
+organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth into life whenever
+the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper incidences of
+environment occur.</p>
+
+<p>We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring
+forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as
+unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to
+such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary
+telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north,
+or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions
+occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a
+country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in
+which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the
+general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees
+peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in
+the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution
+of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to
+latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall,
+soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.</p>
+
+<p>But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for
+the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing,
+if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data
+for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the
+evolutionists have been spinning for us.</p>
+
+<p>Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials,
+more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year.
+We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only
+to find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we
+advance, or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our
+vast mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas
+thoroughfared and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits
+signs of becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in
+her demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of
+facts as the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future
+recognition. She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is
+likely to become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due
+to her methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out
+her hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to
+return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to
+adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna
+and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all
+indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of
+time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in
+character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to
+require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production
+and reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn
+her species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power
+above her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was
+brought forth."</p>
+
+<p>From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and
+wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to
+the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached
+out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as
+avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized
+forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so
+remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may
+be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties
+of the <i>Sequoia</i>, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs, poplars,
+hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions during
+the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown on the
+spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain
+undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a
+warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized
+forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively
+showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have
+worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in
+genetic value.</p>
+
+<p>There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical
+forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm
+inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial
+periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the
+earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formul&aelig;, we can have no
+conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period
+named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest
+glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there
+have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can
+be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening
+maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It
+is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible
+glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who
+differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any
+other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his
+theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an
+interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and
+nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the
+present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have
+undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it
+require to work out even <i>one</i> of Mr. Darwin's many evolutional changes?</p>
+
+<p>The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora
+and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be
+distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the
+varieties of the <i>Sequoia</i> family, the oaks, beeches, firs, hazelnuts,
+etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be difficult to
+classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they cannot be
+placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled out of
+representative types. But why should our speculative botanists insist upon
+these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative forms" of
+which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has given us
+the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be claimed is
+that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions of years
+ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not
+repugnant, alliances, can produce</p>
+
+<blockquote>            --"Streak'd gillyflowers,<br />
+Which some call nature's bastards."</blockquote>
+
+<p>it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her
+alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of
+propagation. If she produced the <i>Sequoia gigantea</i>, or the great redwood
+tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous period, she
+has propagated it ever since according to her own loving methods, and it
+is idle to talk of the <i>Sequoia Langsdorfii</i> as being the original
+ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of the sequoias.
+How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz that these
+trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in
+individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can
+never bear the fruit of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of the
+<i>Quercus</i> or oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of
+ingenuity to show that the various members of this old and
+ancestrally-knotty family have all descended from two or three of the
+hardier varieties. He arrives at this conclusion from a geographical
+survey of what he would call the "whole field of distribution," and
+"the probable historical connection between these congeneric species."
+But science should deal with as few probabilities as possible,
+especially where experience furnishes no guide to certainty, and only
+the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never predicate
+probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some
+likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or
+otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we
+determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so
+much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in
+the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be
+absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a
+determinate judgment. The <i>Quercus robur</i> may furnish the maximum test
+to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other
+variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M.
+De Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than
+twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded
+to be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long
+as the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one
+twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to
+determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished
+in the past.</p>
+
+<p>Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other,
+M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has
+governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has
+only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still
+speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may
+show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed
+to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because
+they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from
+the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like
+engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity
+of <i>idea</i>, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of the
+<i>individuorum similium</i> in Jessieu's definition of species. But similarity
+must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere exists in
+nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the rarest
+possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million will be
+found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees of the
+same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and branching
+of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated covering,
+<i>Et sic de similibus</i> everywhere, and with respect to every thing. Nature
+is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of similarity and
+tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the Platonic
+conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only a
+supplementary truth to that of <i>de similibus</i>. In the eye of the soul all
+objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as
+consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material
+universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[<a href="#foot20">20</a>] into
+the smallest possible number of similar or identical forms, may be all
+well enough to accomplish scientific classification; but the productive
+power of nature can never be limited by these mental processes of our own.</p>
+
+<p>The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently
+enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in
+speaking of the <i>Quercus robur</i> and its probable origin, says that it is
+"traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks
+eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant
+shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest
+descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the
+Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats
+on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after
+the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The
+spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia
+was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring
+subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of
+the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which
+spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when
+conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no
+difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical
+conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the
+speculative botanist.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they
+"have come into existence coincident both in time and place with
+pre&euml;xisting closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as
+individual localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of
+original progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily
+determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species
+preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place,
+their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by pre&euml;xistence.
+The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the
+appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a
+closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is
+lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to
+progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species
+preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than
+the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of
+observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic
+connection between the different species, or between even the same
+species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that
+advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization
+depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the
+dispersion of seeds.</p>
+
+<p>The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not
+depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of
+specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the
+possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of
+conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually
+concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection
+with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual
+distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of
+preceding conditions." [<a href="#foot21">21</a>] And he is forced to this conclusion by his
+virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged means of
+seed-distribution.</p>
+
+<p>The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and
+animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what
+they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can
+any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis,
+which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what
+forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is
+impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of
+thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel
+wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we
+make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties
+existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they
+were brought about by artificial processes.</p>
+
+<p>These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been
+practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in
+nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the
+distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend
+towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from
+other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies,
+resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens
+and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of
+species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced
+by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving
+tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of
+man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the
+category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In
+view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such
+as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders,
+tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard
+Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea
+of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the
+result of man's agency.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to
+undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists
+and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among
+individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the
+absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the
+fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary
+limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These
+differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the
+question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature,
+rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new
+races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than
+certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease.
+But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to
+origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the
+oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the
+Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that
+no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three
+million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million
+years, except that the <i>Sequoia gigantea</i> may drop out, from the vandalism
+of man or the next glacial drift.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique &eacute;n Norwege," says "that each
+species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has its
+own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric
+gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture
+and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the
+physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary
+hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the
+point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without
+the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There
+was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth
+than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first
+instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense
+of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees
+of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography,
+climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and
+tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that
+institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with
+a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern
+forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which,
+though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their
+leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be
+distinctly understood, is no alteration <i>produced</i> by climate. Trees are
+made for and not <i>by</i> climate, and they keep their characteristics
+throughout their whole range, which with some extends through a great
+variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we suppose he means
+by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and sub-arctic.</p>
+
+<p>In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of
+the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United
+States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and
+extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important
+elements--in fact, the <i>most</i> important--is wanting in the tables before
+us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of specimens were
+obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have occurred, although
+it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He had his materials to
+work upon, and may have done the best that any one could with them. And
+yet it is just as important to know at what <i>elevation</i> a particular tree
+grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes from a sub-arctic
+or sub-tropical region.</p>
+
+<p>But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with
+most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and
+trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other
+in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward
+from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We
+have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief,
+if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional
+grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He
+wants it distinctly understood that trees are made <i>for</i>, and not <i>by</i>,
+climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a
+localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by
+climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved
+throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and
+migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it
+would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or
+the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us
+neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the
+climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during
+their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.</p>
+
+<p>With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is
+undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made."
+They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring
+them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow
+now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of
+the ground made the Lord God <i>to grow</i>" every plant of the field, and
+every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the
+want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions,
+the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and
+growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest
+extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the
+climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees
+modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true
+physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearance
+<i>in</i> climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without
+material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor.
+<i>Why</i> they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we
+assume a pre&euml;xisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our
+subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth to
+bring them forth, after <i>his</i> spirit (the animating soul of life) had
+moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of the
+earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more
+comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the
+perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled.
+Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that
+it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human
+soul. Besides, we find <i>it true in fact</i>, since the earth is constantly
+teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law impressed
+upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--</p>
+
+<blockquote>              "If this faith fail,<br />
+The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,<br />
+And earth's base built on stubble."</blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="07"></a>Chapter VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>What Is Life? Its Various Theories.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human
+reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to
+determine. It furnishes no objective <i>datum</i> on which to predicate
+attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as
+the coordination of the <i>vis vitae</i> in nature, which is an undisguised
+form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes
+as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It
+admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical
+proposition. To say of life that it is "a co&ouml;rdination of action," might
+be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise,
+crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an
+illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication,
+analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and
+apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process
+of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and
+uniformity of expression, in designating as a <i>power, property, force</i>,
+etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and
+profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one
+answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of
+all life in the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases,
+borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "<i>Jupiter est genitor</i>,"
+"<i>Jupiter est quodcunque vivit</i>," etc., which, although uninspired
+utterances, strike their roots deeply into the <i>terra incognita</i> of
+consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a
+paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman
+defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted,"
+he was as conclusively indulging in the <i>argumentum in circulo</i> as if he
+had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as
+luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of
+Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement <i>x-y</i> the antithesis of <i>x+y</i>--one
+of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed
+in the formula.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the
+argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing
+enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in
+logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real
+definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of
+reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular
+phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern
+materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the
+"potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated
+differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the
+part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a
+whimsical enough way of putting it.</p>
+
+<p>According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full
+of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But
+this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once
+received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it
+is idle to predicate the <i>vis vitae</i>. For the great bulk of our globe is
+made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which
+neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the
+slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or
+plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the
+world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the
+chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the
+principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In
+whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in
+respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of
+empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems,
+than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward
+survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond
+this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to
+which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abb&eacute; Spallanzani in
+modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few
+others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the
+inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its
+elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing
+germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller
+than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond
+the construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that
+the germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the
+earth, or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to
+bring forth."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything
+which exists is referable to the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>--to non-corporeal, yet
+extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's
+bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with
+a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of
+the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory
+so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible,
+ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the
+entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of
+elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes
+with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it
+is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely
+numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm:
+everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own
+spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a
+germ, the totality of things."</p>
+
+<p>But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of
+being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism"
+landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living
+things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they
+make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature
+still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that
+this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable
+experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis
+of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent
+materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm
+rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in
+this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a
+scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely
+fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great
+advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena
+occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now.
+It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the
+panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so
+deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation
+in these directions.[<a href="#foot22">22</a>] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least
+conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope,
+any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by
+the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a
+scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena,
+and satisfactorily accounts for them all, whether it originally came from
+Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a matter of comparatively slight
+moment, so far as the scientific world is concerned. At least, it would
+seem so to us. But to talk of the <i>de novo</i> origin of "living matter" as
+the result of the dynamic force of molecules--themselves concessively
+"dead matter"--is to indulge in quite as fanciful a speculation as the
+advocates of the panspermic hypothesis have ever ventured to suggest.
+Professor Bastian is forced to go back of his infusorial forms and
+fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from which he admits they are
+"evolved." But why evolved? Does not the principle of vitality lie back of
+the pellicle, as well as the fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he
+that the extremest verge of microscopic investigation has been attained,
+in what he is pleased to designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is
+a very potential word, and no one may yet know what boundless stores of
+absurd theory and metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![<a href="#foot23">23</a>] He admits
+that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can have
+nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic
+organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise
+into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin,
+that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in
+and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both
+animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in,
+or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution,"
+for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the
+developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree,
+lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or
+the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this
+developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of
+ancestry to be traced anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the
+Darwinian <i>plexus</i> squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen and
+Tr&eacute;viranus agree that the infusoria met with have never presented similar
+characters when they have been encountered in different infusions; nor
+have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different portions of it
+have been <i>exposed to the incidence of different conditions</i>. The
+slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the materials employed,
+are invariably accompanied by the appearance of different organisms--these
+being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and unaccompanied by any of the
+familiar forms." Other writers of equal eminence in this field of
+investigation have not only observed the same characteristics, but
+encountered the same difficulties in classification, from the very great
+diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms. So great is this
+diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that little certainty
+or value can be attached to the classifications already made. Even
+Professor O.F. M&uuml;ller, after he had convinced himself that he had
+discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a single
+genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut them all
+down to mere modifications of one and the same species.</p>
+
+<p>We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of
+emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of
+different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The
+presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically
+averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of
+"conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital
+phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the
+mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of
+any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected,
+it will produce <i>some</i> form of life; not because it contains this or that
+morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100&deg; C--that to which
+it is experimentally subjected before microscopic examination,--but
+because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the required heat-test
+or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible by heat as by
+glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the proper
+conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in either the
+quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion, is, as these
+eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the appearance of
+different forms of life, just as the slightest change in soil-conditions,
+such as that produced by the presence of one species of tree with another
+in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the appearance of another and
+altogether different plant, as well as truffle tuber.</p>
+
+<p>But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to
+combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we
+refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its
+complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme
+simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in
+the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is
+formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements
+that take place <i>in invisible colloidal molecules</i>--a process which is
+essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived from
+lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded
+definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a
+hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all
+materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no
+such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed.
+There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resulting
+<i>from</i>, not <i>in</i>, the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>, or the elementary principle of life in
+nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in abundance. This
+materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as a generic one
+even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed that the
+"proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of Professor
+Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. M&uuml;ller, the "bioplast" of Professor Beale,
+etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in name. They are
+mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which exhibit the first
+active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size from the one
+hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second of an inch in
+diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks of
+semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous
+layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they
+were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder
+supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is
+the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the
+plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the
+first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome
+of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on
+earth.[<a href="#foot24">24</a>]</p>
+
+<p>But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter,
+any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move,
+pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs
+with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the
+microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as
+essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or
+megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper
+response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the
+marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or
+classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter,
+we can never predicate <i>vitality</i> of it, any more than we can predicate
+<i>intellectuality</i>. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater
+incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter." These
+qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature, not
+to insensate matter. To assert that life results <i>from</i> "certain
+combinations and rearrangements of matter," and not <i>in</i> them, is utterly
+to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them together
+that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an object of
+perception. Without the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>, or some germinal principle of life,
+lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of matter," and
+determining the movements of their constituent molecules, there could be
+no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a correlate of a
+force without the actual existence of the force itself. [<a href="#foot25">25</a>]</p>
+
+<p>The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive
+structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living
+organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is
+endowed with the property or power of producing life <i>de novo</i>, or, as
+Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living matter"
+which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but whether they
+die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and more potentially
+endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those following their diagnoses
+to determine. They further claim that the same law of vital manifestation
+obtains in organic solutions as in the structureless mass they call
+"protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed with the same potentiality of
+originating life independently of vital units, or <i>de novo</i>, as they more
+persistently phrase it. But why speak of <i>unfolding</i> "new-born specks of
+living matter?" "To unfold" means to open the folds of something--to turn
+them back, get at the processes of their <i>infoldment</i>. It implies a
+pre-existing something, inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a
+germ, what is this pre-existing vital something which their language
+implies? Is our scientific technology so destitute of definitional
+accuracy that they cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without
+committing half that number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born
+specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by
+sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian,
+should trip in this definitional way.</p>
+
+<p>"Living matter," <i>born</i> of what? Certainly not of <i>dead</i> matter. Death
+quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the grave.
+It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of matter in
+which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly ceased, if,
+indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use language
+with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter," whatever the
+phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken nothing. The
+pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is there any birth
+from unquickened matter. Animals <i>bear</i> young, trees <i>bear</i> fruit, but
+force <i>produces</i> results. What then quickens protoplasmic matter? Neither
+vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are to credit the materialists.
+They would scorn to postulate such a theory, or accept any such absurd
+remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is rather "molecular force"--a
+physical, not a vital unit--that gives us these "new-born specks of living
+matter." [<a href="#foot26">26</a>] This is what they would all assert at once, in their
+enthusiasm to enlighten us on a new terminology.</p>
+
+<p>But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the
+subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic
+force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in
+the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived.
+And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond
+microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of
+either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than
+that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is
+going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence
+adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living
+organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one
+is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this
+subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his
+antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and
+deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of
+molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole
+controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the
+visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated
+sky-mist" beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic
+matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain
+forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life:
+But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher,
+more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether
+unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital
+unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These
+primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the
+microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains
+as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative
+hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist
+is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any
+advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and
+the other the synthetic method.</p>
+
+<p>This is the materialistic argument covering the <i>de novo</i> origin of living
+organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they assert, that
+these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or vital units,
+than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is, come from
+pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is overlooking all
+generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of action. Crystals
+are inorganic matter which <i>form</i>, do not <i>grow</i>. They are mere
+symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are produced by some
+law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of their
+constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no beginning
+or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric solids, they
+remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic, not
+functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of
+crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us.
+Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation,
+not of mere aggregation.</p>
+
+<p>But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the
+materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still
+insist, between the pre&euml;xisting germs of crystals and plants--or the only
+difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles of
+matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing diversified
+forms and structural changes than the more highly favored vital particles,
+such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the plastide, etc. The one
+represents mere crystallizable matter, the other the more complex
+colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of producing a much
+greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they concede, end here. But
+the difference is world-wide when we come to processes--the true
+experimental test in all classification. Crystallizable substances
+<i>crystallize</i>--that is all. They pass into a fixed and immovable state,
+and mostly into one as enduring as adamant; while colloidal or albuminoid
+matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no fixed forms--only those that
+are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so marked a feature, in respect
+to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the
+more distinctive name of "ephemeromorphs," in place of <i>infusoria</i>. But
+all these primordial forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with
+a solitary crystal. Everywhere the statical unit <i>forms</i>, the dynamical
+unit <i>grows</i>; the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one
+solidifies, the other opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the
+embrace of eternal silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and
+makes nature resonant with praise.</p>
+
+<p>Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain
+microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo
+in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental
+tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of alg&aelig;. They attribute
+their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation of
+filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the
+latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes
+constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic
+tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of
+molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary
+conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or
+appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating
+either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these
+materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this
+connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in
+which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals,
+in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living
+organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular
+formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would
+expect to encounter from them.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that
+he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms)
+<i>at will</i>, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably
+true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as to <i>his</i>
+(M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field
+with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to
+do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to
+plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, and
+<i>vice versa</i>, then he might be said to have produced corn <i>at will</i>. And
+so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce
+one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by
+any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life
+in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that
+without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as
+complete in one form as another,--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,<br />
+As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."</blockquote>
+
+<p>All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the
+production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of
+nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing
+chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental
+flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the
+action of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and
+if he studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much
+the laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls
+"new-born specks of living matter" are produced <i>de novo</i>, that is,
+independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life
+implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life
+with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as
+plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively
+shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks.
+But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal
+under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by
+experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one.
+His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk about
+<i>de novo</i> production is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were it
+possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed, seed,
+underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with just as
+diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the gigantic
+conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance again, and
+some plants might drop out of the local flora; but the <i>Pater omnipotens
+&AElig;ther</i> of Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the
+earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body, in all the
+prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[<a href="#foot27">27</a>]</p>
+
+<p>But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the
+right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are
+anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they
+resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks,
+they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in
+saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more
+satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even
+Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they
+thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in
+countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his
+accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the
+experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is
+a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital
+unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat.
+Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of
+such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is,
+that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy
+and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific
+explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs"
+primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions,
+and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But
+in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip
+in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.</p>
+
+<p>The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it
+conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural
+forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or
+inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system
+presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms
+of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular
+crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will
+forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine
+Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change
+itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from
+eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living
+types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless
+crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In
+this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline
+argument of the materialists has its value.</p>
+
+<p>The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of
+their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting
+statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions
+that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living
+organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions,
+nor should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the
+validity of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If
+they insist upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a
+crystalline "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they
+are effectually estopped from denying the presence of vital units in
+dynamical aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction
+that the process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one
+case, eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn
+round and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and
+certain, but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms.
+If vital units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units,
+statical units, and morphological units, should fall into the same
+categories of judgment.</p>
+
+<p>A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists
+and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in
+attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by
+his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases
+necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "<i>the
+continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations</i>." This
+definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of
+Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the
+phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them,
+fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any
+other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious
+formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand on it, but only
+in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all living things,
+are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number of little boxes,
+one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of all contains the
+germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was hardly a legitimate
+characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of "continuous
+adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box adjusted to the
+external relations of another. The definition is really that of a piece of
+working machinery--any working machinery--and was designed to cover Mr.
+Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by molecular force.</p>
+
+<p>But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations
+to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the
+upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration
+of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely
+external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its
+external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of
+causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the
+characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the
+distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its
+hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and
+electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all
+showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or
+relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life,"
+according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an
+automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to
+external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor
+Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these
+automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment
+of their internal to their external relations is continuous.</p>
+
+<p>The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" encouraged Professor
+Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: "Life," he
+says, "is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of
+growing by selection and interstitial appropriation of new matter (what
+new matter?) which then assumes similar qualities, of continually varying
+in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M),
+and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions
+of its own substance."</p>
+
+<p>It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this
+definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best
+aid him by grammatically analyzing its structure. And,</p>
+
+<p>1. "Life is capable of growing." We are glad to know this. As a vitalist
+it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back
+seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We
+let its "unstable collocation" pass for what it is worth, and stick to our
+grammatical analysis.</p>
+
+<p>2. "Life grows--is capable of doing something." This assurance positively
+encourages us.</p>
+
+<p>3. "It grows by selection and interstitial appropriation." This is still
+more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we
+feel, is increasing in potentiality.</p>
+
+<p>4. "By appropriation it enables <i>new matter to assume similar qualities
+to old matter</i>." This makes us more confident than ever; we take another
+step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is getting to
+be almost a "potentiated potentiality," to adopt the style of
+materialistic phrases.</p>
+
+<p>5. "It causes matter <i>to continually vary in composition.</i>" Bravo! we
+unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most
+comforting assurance. Life is assuredly getting the upperhand of
+Matter (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere "undiscovered correlate
+of motion"--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with
+it--throws it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more
+steps forward.</p>
+
+<p>6. "Life is capable of self-multiplication"--has almost a creative
+faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of "bravoes," and,
+stepping boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to "throw
+up the sponge," take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new
+definition of "life."</p>
+
+<p>But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his
+own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that
+all these attempts to define life as a non-entity only, tend to keep up
+the demoralizing idea that it is an actual entity. We entirely agree with
+him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the
+definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees
+this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on
+Ephemeromorphs: "Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of
+which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively
+useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and,
+what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an
+independent entity."</p>
+
+<p>It may be objected that our grammatical analysis of the professor's
+definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should
+cover a "living thing," and not "life" as an abstract, term. Our reply to
+this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is
+simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that
+his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other,
+either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition
+entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able
+pathological anatomist of the London University college is a "living
+thing." He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is
+capable of growing, by "selection and interstitial appropriation," in
+reputation at least, if not in the direction of "an independent entity."
+His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the
+ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal
+manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional
+labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea
+that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a
+London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or
+the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not
+in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His
+assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the
+phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.</p>
+
+<p>Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism
+cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any
+more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of
+gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing
+organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the
+universe (call it the will of God, gravitation or what you may) must have
+existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either
+advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over
+effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the
+phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To
+say that there can be no <i>manifestation</i> of life without an organism is
+true; but to assume that the vital principle which organizes is dependent
+on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be the
+lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that
+cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental
+processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying
+the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.</p>
+
+<p>"Plato lived." He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant
+of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have
+looked upon as "the temple of God," and all the world would have
+recognized as a god-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek
+chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
+All agreed in this. And yet it was not the <i>habitat</i> but the <i>habitant</i>
+that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest
+enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was
+the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling <i>Archeus</i>, presiding
+over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic powers
+therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even
+Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this,
+with all that his new terms "ontogeny" and "phylogeny" may imply. When
+potential life passed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it
+was not the pabulum that assimilated the man, but the man the pabulum. If
+this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case
+of plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the
+phenomenal manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a
+cabbage-stalk. In other words, if the animating principle of life--or, as
+the Bible has it, the "animating soul of life"--is not what manifests
+itself in material embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor
+Haeckel mean by his new term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines
+of descent in all organic beings?</p>
+
+<p>If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether <i>mal pos&eacute;</i>. Pabulum
+is nothing without a pre&euml;xisting "something" to dispose of it. It is not
+so much as a jelly-mass breakfast for one of Professor Haeckel's
+"protamoeb&aelig;;" for if it were served up in advance, there would be none of
+his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it, much less any of
+his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in her "hand-book of
+cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch your hare. But our
+ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the hare and the curry, in
+serving up his pabulum to the "protamoeb&aelig;." The improvident pabulum
+"evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like, is eviscerated by them,
+as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life, therefore, begins in the
+tragedy of Mount Cith&aelig;ron, it is to be hoped it will end in the delights
+of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="08"></a>Chapter VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
+seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
+not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
+their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
+super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
+that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
+heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100&deg;
+C--212&deg; F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially when
+the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of fifteen or
+twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the light of all
+the experiments which have been made in this direction, there is some
+doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many, if not
+most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100&deg; C, there is little
+or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more tenacious of
+life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is equally
+unquestionable.</p>
+
+<p>M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
+capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
+of 120&deg; to 125&deg; C. (248-257&deg; F), while the same spores entirely lose their
+germinating power after an exposure for half an hour or more to a slightly
+higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on "The Action of Heat
+on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the proceedings of the Royal
+Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are capable of resisting the
+action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300&deg; F, although exposed
+therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however
+diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question
+in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the
+seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible
+"germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth itself.</p>
+
+<p>We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
+materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
+they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
+no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
+by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
+between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
+conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
+other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
+obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
+Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
+protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
+in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
+Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
+any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
+homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
+give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
+soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
+any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
+character of the infusoria appearing therein.[<a href="#foot28">28</a>] The cells are living
+organisms springing from vital units, and can no more manifest themselves
+independently of these units than life can manifest itself independently
+of an actual organism. And they make their appearance in the proper
+environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its primordial germ or
+vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the soil. Everywhere
+the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the plant or tree
+precedes the natural seeds it bears.</p>
+
+<p>This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
+vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
+vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
+single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
+living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
+verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
+as we may into the <i>arcana</i> of nature in search of exact scientific truth,
+and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
+propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
+and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
+inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
+predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
+or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
+Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
+we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
+universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
+all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
+infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
+such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
+as a vehicle of thought.</p>
+
+<p>To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
+may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
+metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
+without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
+operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
+intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
+things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
+unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
+the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
+God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
+successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
+if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
+outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
+insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
+conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
+the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
+outside of it.</p>
+
+<p>But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
+overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
+mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
+uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
+the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
+greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
+that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
+an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
+any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
+"We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
+attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
+universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
+themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
+overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
+one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
+other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
+yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
+completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
+which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
+therein, originally came.</p>
+
+<p>But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
+scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
+will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
+God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
+universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
+the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
+independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
+space, or time independently of eternity. [<a href="#foot29">29</a>]</p>
+
+<p>According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
+essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
+all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
+modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
+were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
+that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
+whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
+law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
+order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
+the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
+that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
+manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
+exhibited in scientific formul&aelig;. The higher and more satisfactory
+induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
+made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
+till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
+organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
+point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
+give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
+causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
+which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
+potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
+necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
+inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
+who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
+position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
+our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
+a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
+in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
+once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
+a universe</p>
+
+<p>  "Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."</p>
+
+<p>But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
+life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
+universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
+positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
+before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" <i>in tandem</i>, that
+the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
+induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
+of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
+to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
+reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
+mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
+nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
+almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
+although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
+proportions of that scientific toy.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
+matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
+countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
+different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital
+unit" can be <i>evolved</i>, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
+"primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
+can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
+chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
+nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
+is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
+multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
+that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
+confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists
+upon drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads
+of living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
+earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
+organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and
+vegetal world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the
+identical language we here use.</p>
+
+<p>And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
+grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
+can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
+vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
+unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
+point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
+microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
+units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
+insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
+crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
+beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
+know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
+development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
+the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
+knows nothing--we know nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
+now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
+phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
+exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
+a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
+studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
+of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
+that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
+fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
+tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
+specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
+undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
+Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
+but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
+knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
+beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
+reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
+contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
+He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
+glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
+distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
+vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-<i>unit</i> and
+the dog-<i>unit,</i> instead of falling back on his bioplastic spinners and
+weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing workers of the
+one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is far more
+rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict scientific
+methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to a single
+direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.</p>
+
+<p>There is a world-wide difference between the dog-<i>ego</i> and the man-<i>ego;</i>
+but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
+bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one
+master-<i>ego</i> as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall
+differentiate this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they
+shall work. Not a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed
+by the one head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts
+determine nothing, direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as
+obediently as a galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate
+movements, all molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic
+force, are the work of the one vital webster, or principle of life,
+within--that which shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is
+true from the first or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ,"
+until the real occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic
+weavers, and lies down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines
+its own structural form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to
+the slightest impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The
+occupant of this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers
+after another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of
+woven texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the
+same <i>physical</i> dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for
+his master, carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in
+the chase, gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home,
+exhibits the same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to
+sleep, dreams of the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to
+engage. This continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty
+years of physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen
+times over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
+undifferentiated "dog-unit."</p>
+
+<p>Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
+fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
+bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
+sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
+led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
+expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
+cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
+one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
+only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
+as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
+conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
+re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
+producing it <i>de novo</i> have not yet been ascertained, nor is it likely
+they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction between
+crystallizable matter and living substance.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
+destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
+germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
+environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
+or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
+composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
+adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
+developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
+true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
+morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
+constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
+doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
+forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
+spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
+prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
+the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
+nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
+into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.</p>
+
+<p>In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
+recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
+at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
+ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
+have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
+certain small fishes of the <i>Cyprinidae</i> and other families, have made
+their appearance therein.[<a href="#foot30">30</a>] Nobody has thought of stocking these
+standing pools of water with the fish in question, nor has there been any
+surface overflow to account for their presence, nor any other apparent
+means of transportation, if we except the fish-catching birds, and they
+generally swallow their food in the water or on the nearest tree to the
+point of capture. Any theory accounting for the presence of spawn is,
+therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have traversed hard clay
+deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to make their appearance
+in these waters. The only possible explanation of this class of phenomena,
+and they are by no means infrequent, is to be found in "favoring
+conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are primordial
+manifestations of life, and such as would have made their appearance in
+any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under the same
+favoring conditions.</p>
+
+<p>And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
+cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
+grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
+principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
+another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
+of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
+May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
+countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
+in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
+those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
+vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
+persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
+present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
+detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
+dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
+grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
+his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
+Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
+time, is not the question. It is the <i>fact</i> of vital growth that we are
+after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as well
+as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with sturdy
+old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all <i>vital</i> law--"has her
+seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
+life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
+constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
+contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
+completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
+nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
+and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
+and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
+invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
+organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
+elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
+in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
+living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
+assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
+and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
+mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
+living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
+little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
+principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
+a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
+using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
+demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
+intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
+unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
+the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
+having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
+mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
+life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
+may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
+soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
+fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
+embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
+"dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
+theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
+beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
+of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
+organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
+except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
+over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
+the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
+reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
+Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
+matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
+once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
+intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
+anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
+or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
+an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
+tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
+of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
+"dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
+fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
+endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
+limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
+ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
+sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
+nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
+Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
+been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
+highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
+force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
+bound to except.</p>
+
+<p>Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
+may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
+the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
+all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
+classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
+matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
+between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
+germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
+least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
+statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
+bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
+mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
+merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
+cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
+microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
+cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
+tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
+matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
+view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
+vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
+physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
+performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
+assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
+species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
+very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
+structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
+own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
+these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
+well as meaning.</p>
+
+<p>The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
+is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
+millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
+Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
+biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
+comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
+specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
+each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
+like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
+together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
+and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
+appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
+was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
+direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
+<i>in</i> all living organisms, not <i>from</i> them; directing Professor Beale's
+"bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of necessary
+plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first instance;
+observing no developmental processes by which one form of life laps over
+upon another, and following no order but that of universal harmony in the
+Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for existence, even among
+the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and the smallest and
+weakest must give place to the largest and strongest everywhere, and <i>vice
+versa</i>, as Time, the greatest of all rodents, gnaws away at the mystical
+tree of life. But in every living organism, from the lowest and simplest
+to the highest and most complex, all bioplastic spinners of filamentous
+tissue, all plastide weavers of membranous or spun matter, all epithelial
+bobbin-runners, and other anatomical helpers and workers, perform their
+respective tasks under the special supervision we have named, that is,
+under the higher unit of life. They all work for the advancement and
+well-being of the higher organism of which they form a component and
+necessarily subordinate part.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
+and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
+from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
+evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
+wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
+far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
+mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
+accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
+other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
+not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
+carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
+and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
+made <i>his</i> happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
+equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
+upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
+direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
+shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells.
+
+But decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale,
+although one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is
+that which makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have
+already referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
+altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
+half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
+vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
+the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
+and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
+Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
+something--a sort of <i>tertium quid</i>--between living and non-living matter.
+But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his carmine
+solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts, inferentially at
+least, that all other matter, in any and every living organism, is "dead
+matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no matter is living in
+any vital organism which has not been assimilated and built up into living
+membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case of man) to his will,
+as well as performing the autonomous functions of plants and the lower
+animals. For all these membranous tissues are innumerably thronged with
+bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the purposes of obedience to
+man's will, or of performing any autonomous function, but simply to supply
+the tissues with the necessary nutrient matter to make up for the constant
+waste that is going on in a healthy living organ. This waste is very much
+greater than has heretofore been supposed, so that the man or animal of
+to-day may be an entirely distinct and separate one, considered
+materially, from that of a year or more ago. And this averment would have
+a decided advantage over Professor Beale's, since, in meeting a friend, we
+might be certain that four-fifths of him at least was alive, while the
+other one-fifth was industriously at work to keep him alive, instead of a
+stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be, upon the street. Besides, it
+would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving
+themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale
+virtually does in the argument.</p>
+
+<p>The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
+life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
+exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
+are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
+weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
+plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
+song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
+and brilliant <i>roulades</i>, as if the little vocalist had caught its
+inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
+now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
+occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
+dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
+to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
+chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
+interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
+looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
+ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
+threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
+weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
+nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
+any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
+suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
+hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
+weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
+music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. <i>Where</i> it is, not
+man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
+uplifted by inspiration, that--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  "The soul of music never dies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Nor slumbers in its shell;<br />
+'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And thence returns to dwell."</blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="09"></a>Chapter IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which
+have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an
+"undiscovered correlative of force." Those who have the reputation of
+being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm
+of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly
+contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to
+eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of
+Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens
+where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its
+glory, this "undiscovered correlative of force," which they have indicated
+as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.
+Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles
+us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were
+they to define life as an "undiscovered force" simply, their definition
+would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in
+precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor
+metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never
+answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the
+success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this
+"correlative" of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since
+they are so chary of informing us themselves.</p>
+
+<p>A "correlate" of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal
+relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses
+nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relationship, such as
+father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.
+As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this
+particular force stands in some sort of relationship to the other forces
+of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the <i>material</i> forces of
+nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relationship is
+what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the
+universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed
+relationship as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital
+force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or
+sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relationship, is not stated. The
+scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is
+to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to <i>x</i> (the vital or
+unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and consequents
+together, and eliminating the value of <i>x</i>, we may mathematically obtain
+the value of vital force.</p>
+
+<p>But to eliminate the value of <i>x</i> is what troubles them. Herbert Spencer
+has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any higher
+correlation than "molecular force;" nor can he definitely inform us
+whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he
+manifestly regards their relationship as constituting either a very
+attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the
+value of <i>x</i>, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and
+gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly
+contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in
+scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular
+force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not
+demolished, this machinery, in his recent treatise on "The Mystery of
+Life," we will spare it any further blows, and proceed to the
+consideration of "molecular force."</p>
+
+<p>Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us
+definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon
+to use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of
+"molecular attraction," or that force acting immediately on the
+integrant molecules or particles of a body, as distinguished from the
+attraction of gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it
+comes to ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to
+molecules, such as have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must
+feel our way with caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or
+rather of their materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather
+force, that is in them.</p>
+
+<p>It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a "molecule" is
+the smallest conceivable quantity of a simple or compound substance, as an
+"atom" is the smallest conceivable quantity of an element which enters
+into combination with other elements to form material substance. For
+instance, the smallest conceivable quantity of water is a molecule, while
+the smallest conceivable quantity of either of the two elements of which
+water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore,
+there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And
+since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may
+contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which
+lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest
+forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural
+alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter,
+and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man,
+knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into
+unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre,
+and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the
+general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on
+the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the
+actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest
+hypothetical data. It is the office of "molecular force," if there is any
+meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by "molecular attraction," to
+conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.</p>
+
+<p>If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man
+must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks
+and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended
+to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war
+with the principal phenomena of life, and should be classed with the other
+undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as "the
+fictions of a mechanical imagination." The truth is that these much abused
+and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in
+nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that
+inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a
+devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of
+quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at
+once seek quiet and loving companionship with kindred molecules, and
+retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from
+their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or
+constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living
+dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as
+perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be
+imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold
+of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery
+and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination
+of the molecules.</p>
+
+<p>If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about
+time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter,
+motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the
+multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for
+recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing
+the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional
+value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and
+vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their
+several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not
+emancipating language from the gross thraldom into which their "molecular
+machinery" has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the
+force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of
+fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less
+impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and
+things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences,
+coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable
+chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions
+of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and
+foot--under the one explanatory head of "force-correlation." We protest
+against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe,
+even if it were practicable under scientific methods.</p>
+
+<p>But Professor Tyndall denies that "molecular groupings" and "molecular
+motions" explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating
+life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[<a href="#foot31">31</a>] And it would be
+difficult to cite a stronger and more determined materialist as authority
+on the point we are considering. He says: "If love were known to be
+associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the
+brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as ignorant as
+before, as to the cause of motion." But there is no proof that the
+molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary for
+keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the brain
+itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a state
+of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been
+exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of
+consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there
+can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one
+set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules,
+as seen in the object glass of the microscope, there is no absolute
+certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any
+life-manifestation, as heretofore assumed. Some quite as well defined
+forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to
+predicate vitality of them.[<a href="#foot32">32</a>] These infinitessimal and constantly
+varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth part of an inch
+in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may owe their
+oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations, and even
+their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes than
+those strictly "vital." And it should be borne in mind that their actual
+movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as their real
+dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic infusions only,
+they are presumably vital organisms rather than fomentative or mere
+filamentous yeast-manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place
+under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that
+the "primordial cells" possesses in any degree the characteristics of a
+"machine," nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the
+character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to
+them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He
+says: "They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the shells
+scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which
+the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the
+cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted."
+This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional
+office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's "formed matter."
+The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and
+simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.
+Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial
+cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-shells have
+been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come,
+both the cells and shells, from the pre&euml;xisting vital units, or
+determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement,
+without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent
+tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only
+favor its manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>But some of the materialists claim that what we call "vital units," or
+invisible, indestructible germs,[<a href="#foot33">33</a>] are at best only "physical
+relations;" that they have nothing more than a hypothetical existence,
+without any independent recognizable quality justifying our conclusions
+respecting them. But may not this identical language be retortively
+suggested in the case of their "correlates of force?" What more than a
+hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm to get rid of
+all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a feature in
+their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have shown in the
+verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of cause and
+effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical aggregates, and
+even assign absolute identity of attributes; but when it comes to
+dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial identity only, and deny
+the presence of the law altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in
+controversy. In speaking of his "plastide particles," Professor Bastian,
+the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says:
+"Certain of these particles, through default of <i>necessary conditions,</i>
+never actually develop into higher modes of being." Here he makes the
+absence of "necessary conditions" the cause of non-development, while he
+stoutly denies that the presence of such "conditions" give rise to the
+development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he
+speaks of the elemental origin of "living matter" as "having probably
+taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when
+such matter was first engendered." But how his "sum-total of external
+conditions," acting upon <i>dead</i> matter, can "engender" <i>living</i> matter, is
+one of those "related heterogenetic phenomena" which he does not
+condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that he
+gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of
+life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.</p>
+
+<p>To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of
+this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon
+the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all
+life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be
+no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards
+structural development, but only external conditions acting upon "dead
+matter," in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or
+undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped
+stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the
+complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their
+integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous
+entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as
+well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements
+should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous
+complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life "engendered from
+dead matter" in the material universe.</p>
+
+<p>For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more
+resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the
+happening by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the
+"fortuitous concourse of atoms;" now it is the "fortuitous aggregate of
+molecules." By what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have
+dropped out of their scientific categories, and the molecules have been
+advanced to their commanding place in <i>absolute accidentalness</i>, is one
+of those unassignable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We
+can only account for it on the supposition that they have all become
+worshippers of that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn
+of Amalthea and plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of
+language and other much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable
+knack at disposing of them.</p>
+
+<p>The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two
+conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary
+environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.
+Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning
+incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see
+that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by
+merely substituting "molecular force" for "vital force," in the
+explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do
+take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary
+plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not
+dependent on the vital principle <i>as it acts</i>, rather than on the
+molecules <i>as they act</i>,[<a href="#foot34">34</a>] The higher force should always subordinate
+the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other processes, of nature. It is
+the vital principle that differentiates matter--the aggregate of
+molecules--not matter differentiating the vital principle. No "mol&eacute;cules
+organiques" can ever differentiate an ape-unit into a man-unit, any more
+than Professor Tyndall can fetch a Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an
+ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a man-unit, eternally a man-unit.</p>
+
+<p>Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed <i>unit</i>
+as "<i>une id&eacute;e dans l'entendement de Dieu," </i> (to use a better French
+expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off their
+own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that
+"life exists," and that it has existed from all eternity <i>as possible</i>
+in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic
+science is disposed to butt its head against this impregnable
+proposition, it can do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may
+happen to the inconsiderate head.</p>
+
+<p>For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as
+there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search
+and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the
+forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in
+the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they
+descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions
+of life, or passed upward and outward, in <i>Sirius-</i>distances, to the
+irresolvable nebul&aelig;, where other and perhaps brighter stars might burst
+upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still enormous
+fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same. Wider
+and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the stellar
+swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the
+uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and
+Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of space,
+the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the
+world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished
+the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and
+hangeth the earth upon nothing--"<i>holdeth back the face of his throne and
+spreadeth his cloud upon it</i>."</p>
+
+<p>What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small
+specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call "living matter," or, in
+the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming masses which
+we call "dead matter," who shall say that "the secret places of the Most
+High" are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of God first moved
+through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all
+matter, there was not imparted to it that "animating principle of life" of
+which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting
+itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set
+aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological
+expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for
+scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their
+specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and
+molecular theories of life.</p>
+
+<p>But speaking of the higher forces as subordinating the lower, suggests
+that there should be something more definitely explained regarding the
+hypothesis of "differentiation," on which Mr. Herbert Spencer hangs so
+much of his mathematical faith in the true explication of vital
+phenomena. The term "differentiation" is not so formidable as it might
+seem to the general reader at first sight. As applied to physiological
+problems it should have the same determinate value, in expressing
+functional differences, as in the higher operations of mathematics.
+Nothing can, of course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things
+differentiate each other, even when functionally allied. The actual
+co&euml;fficient sought is the difference effected, in functional value, in
+one of two independent variables. For all formul&aelig; in differentiation are
+constructed on the hypothesis that only one of two variables suffers
+change. The differential co&euml;fficient has yet to be determined which shall
+express the developmental changes in two variables at once. When,
+therefore, we attempt to extend the formul&aelig; of differentiation to plant
+and animal life, we are confronted by a very formidable difficulty at the
+outset--the impossibility of determining an invariable co&euml;fficient for
+any two variables. Besides, all attempts at differentiating an ape-unit
+into anything else than an ape-unit would be as impossible as to multiply
+or divide cabbages by turnips, or sparrows by sparrowhawks. Such
+divisions would give us no quotients, any more than their
+differentiations would give us a co&euml;fficient. Physiological
+differentiation will, therefore, never help us out of fixed species or
+nearly allied types. We can bridge no specific differences by it. In the
+differentiation of the horse and the ass for instance, the superior blood
+will predominate in the preservation of types, and even the mule will
+kick against further differentiation. Nature would so utterly abhor the
+practice as resolutely to slam the door in Mr. Spencer's face, if the
+obstinacy of the mule did not kick it off its hinges.</p>
+
+<p>And nature would be quite as intractable in the case of
+"force-correlation," another of Mr. Spencer's redoubtable phrases. This
+term is quite recent in its application to animate objects, nor has it
+been long applied to inanimate. It is claimed to be a recently discovered
+force, and is one that the materialists have seized upon as the Herculean
+club with which to smite all vital theories to the earth. Its meaning, so
+far as it has any, is not difficult to get at. The simplest way to explain
+it, however, is the best. The reader is to understand that when he rubs
+two flat sticks together, the heat thereby engendered is not the result of
+friction, as all the world has heretofore supposed, but that the amount of
+force expended in rubbing the right-hand stick against the left-hand
+stick, is, by some law of versability, not over-well defined, transferred
+to the two sticks, and gets so entangled between their surfaces that it
+can only reappear in another and altogether different kind of force. When
+it leaves the hands and passes into the two sticks, it is, as the
+materialists assert, vital force. But as no force can be annihilated, the
+conclusive assumption is that it still exists somewhere. All of it, in the
+first place, went into the two flat sticks, and, when there, <i>ceased to be
+vital force.</i> Some of it disappeared, of course, in overcoming the inertia
+of the sticks, but the bulk of it became entangled with the superficial
+molecules of the two sticks, and reappeared as <i>heat</i>--another name for
+molecular force.</p>
+
+<p>This is what is meant by the "differentiation" of vital force into
+molecular force, and <i>vice versa</i>. But by what process of rubbing, under
+this law of versability, molecular force can be reversed, or
+differentiated back into vital force, Mr. Spencer has not condescended to
+inform us. The simple truth is, and the materialists will be forced to
+admit it in the end, that there is no verification of this theory beyond
+that of mere force-equivalence. For instance, it has been experimentally
+determined that a certain amount of fuel expended in heat is equivalent to
+a certain amount of mechanical force, not mechanical <i>work</i>, as M. Carnot
+puts it. For force is not expended in work until it is actually generated,
+and the amount generated, not that expended in work, is the real
+equivalence of the heat produced from fuel.</p>
+
+<p>Another problem is presented when it comes to determining the amount of
+generated force necessary to run a piece of machinery which shall
+accomplish a given amount of mechanical work.</p>
+
+<p>A far better phrase to express this equivalence of force has been
+suggested and used by several writers in what is called the "Transmutation
+of Force." For there is no correlation, or reciprocal relation, between
+heat as originally produced by the consumption of fuel and the force as
+engendered in steam before it is transmuted into work. Nor is there any
+real equivalence as between the two forces after its transmutation. A very
+large per centage of heat is lost in its transmutation from a latent form
+in fuel to an active or available form in steam, and a still greater loss
+in its transmission into work by machinery. Theoretically, there may be
+such an equivalence as that named, but practically it is impossible to
+realize it. And a theory that is impossible of realization is of no
+practical utility in itself, and of little value as the basis of further
+theory. If, then, the theory of force equivalence is a failure in
+practical application, it furnishes a very poor basis on which to
+predicate force-correlation, or the doctrine of reciprocal forces. It is
+estimated, for instance, that a pound weight falling seven hundred and
+seventy-two feet, will, in striking the earth, impart to it a degree of
+heat equivalent to raising one pound of water 1&deg; F. But the heat thus
+imparted can never be so utilized as to raise a pound weight seven hundred
+and seventy-two feet into the air.</p>
+
+<p>This shows that there is no actual reciprocity of relationship between the
+force as originally engendered and finally expended in work. Nor can it be
+shown that the original force is transmuted or changed into another and
+different kind of force by the operation. The force generated and the
+force expended are essentially one and the same, as much so as that
+transmitted from the power to the weight by means of a rope and pulley.
+And the quality of the force is not changed, whether the weight be lifted
+by machinery or the human hand. Force, in its mechanical sense, is that
+power which produces motion, or an alteration in the direction of motion,
+and is incapable of being specialized, except in a highly figurative
+sense, into a thousand and one correlates of motion. But these
+miscellaneous and figurative forces are not what we are considering. The
+doctrine of force-correlation takes no such wide and comprehensive sweep.
+It embraces neither the force of wit, nor the force of folly; but
+mechanical force and its equivalents. The force exercised by the human
+hand in lifting a weight either with or without rope and pulley is, in
+every definitional sense of the word, mechanical force. For the arm and
+hand are only the implements, or mechanical contrivances of nature, by
+which the will-power transmutes itself into work, or, more properly
+speaking, transmits itself from the point of force-generation to that of
+force-expenditure. And this is precisely the office performed by all
+mechanical contrivances for the transmission--not transmutation--of force.
+And the most perfect machine is that which transmits the engendered force,
+with the least possible waste or abandonment, to its point of ultimate
+expenditure in work.</p>
+
+<p>All these hypothetical correlates of force, therefore, predicated upon the
+doctrine of force-transmutation, have no foundation in fact, since the
+force transmitted from the point of generation to the point of expenditure
+undergoes no change but that of direction, in its passage along rope,
+wire, belt, pulley, shafting, etc. A man whose limbs have been paralyzed,
+may still will to remove mountains. The will-power is the same, but the
+mechanical contrivances for its transmission are wanting. Of the actual
+point or centre of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power,
+we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards
+the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and
+tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or
+pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a
+rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular
+changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely
+related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through the contracted
+tissues, electrifies the crowbar, or flashes into work from the point of a
+pickaxe. Whatever produces, or tends to produce, motion, or an alteration
+in its direction, is mechanical force, no matter from what force-centre it
+may start. When we can definitely determine the centre of vital force, as
+exercised in building up vital structure, <i>not in wielding pickaxes</i>, it
+is to be hoped we shall be able to distinguish, by the proper correlates,
+vital force from that which is mechanical. But the task is manifestly a
+hopeless one with the materialists.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Beale positively denies that there are any such physical
+force-relations as those claimed by the materialists, and asserts that
+vital force bears no relation, or correlation, to either chemical or
+physical force; that the one is a distinct and separate factor from the
+other, and cannot be interpreted in the same force-formul&aelig;. He says: "The
+idea of motion, or heat, or light, or electricity <i>forming</i> or <i>building</i>
+up, or <i>constructing</i> any texture capable of fulfilling a definite
+purpose, seems absurd, and opposed to all that is known, and yet is the
+notion continually forced upon us, that vitality, which does construct, is
+but a correlate of ordinary energy or motion."</p>
+
+<p>But after devoting so much time to "force-correlation," and
+"force-differentiation," the advocates of "molecular-machinery" may feel
+themselves neglected if we dismiss their favorite hobby without further
+notice. The precise parentage of this term is disputed, but it has any
+number of <i>putative</i> fathers. We have spoken of the size of the molecules
+themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled together on the
+point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now consider the size
+of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own machine, and is
+provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact, it is a very
+nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the molecules,
+instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules run the
+machines. Unfortunately, the question is one that can never be determined.
+The requisite scientific data will forever be wanting.</p>
+
+<p>But Professor James C. Maxwell, now, or quite recently, filling the chair
+of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, England, has
+furnished us with <i>approximate</i> calculations. On the strength of his
+approximations we will proceed to consider the dimensions of these
+wonderful little machines. And first, it may be axiomatically laid down
+that these molecular machines, which either run the molecules or are run
+by them, can never exceed the size of their respective molecules.
+Conceding, then, that each one of these machines exactly fits into its own
+molecule, so as to present identically the same dimensions--as well as
+their largest possible dimensions--it would require two millions of them,
+placed in a row, to make one millimetre, or the one three hundred and
+ninety-four thousandths of an inch in length, or seven hundred and
+eighty-eight billions of them to make one inch! Who will ever be staggered
+at <i>Sirius</i>-distances, after this? And who will deny that an infinite
+world lies below the point of our microscopic vision, if not an Infinite
+kingdom and throne beyond our telescopic glance?</p>
+
+<p>But, following the same high authority in experimental physics, let us
+consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not
+marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions
+of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply
+give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system.
+Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing
+in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet
+kicking of the beam, just a fraction between four and five grammes, or--to
+differentiate the weights--a small fraction over one-tenth of an ounce!</p>
+
+<p>But why not get down to the atoms, of which the molecules are only the
+theoretical congeries, and marshal the "atomic forces" into line? These
+embryonic atoms are much the braver warriors, and, when summoned to do
+battle, spring, lithe and light-armed, against the elemental foe. They are
+no cowardly molecules, these atoms, but make war against Titans, as well
+as Titanic thrones and powers. The elements recognize them as their body
+guardsmen, their corps of invincible lancers, their bravest and best
+soldiers in fight. And they are wholly indifferent as to the legions of
+molecules arrayed against them, and would as soon hurl a mountain of them
+into the sea as to sport with a zephyr or caper with the east wind. Why
+not summon these countless myriads of bright and invincible spearmen, to
+batter down the walls of this Cretan labyrinth of Life? An army of these
+would be worth all the molecules that Professor Maxwell could array in
+line, in a thousand years. No life-problem need remain unsolved with their
+bright spears to drive the tenebrious mists before them. Even Professor
+Tyndall's "fog-banks of primordial haze" would be ignominiously scattered
+in flight before these atomic legions. Let our materialistic friends
+summon them, then, to their aid. The field of controversy will never be
+won by their molecular "Hessians." The ineffably bright lancers that stand
+guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout
+the vitalistic enemy. Advance them then to the front, and, beneath the
+shadowy wing of pestilence or some other appalling ensign of destruction,
+the abashed vital squadrons will flee in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>But let us pass from scientific speculations to alleged scientific facts.
+In a paper read by Dr. Hughes Bennett before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1861, its author says: "The first step, in the process of
+organic formation, is the production of an organic fluid; the second, the
+precipitation of organic molecules, from which, according to the molecular
+law of growth, all other textures are derived either directly or
+indirectly." Here again the molecules, and not the elementary atoms, are
+advanced to the front, and not a little anxiety is shown, in a
+definitional way, to identify vital processes of growth with crystalline
+processes of formation. But Dr. Bennett entirely mistakes, as well as
+misstates, the process of vital development, if he does not overlook the
+law governing the formation of crystals. There can be no symmetrically
+arranged solids in an inorganic fluid without the presence of some law, or
+principle, definitely determining, not the "precipitation," but the
+"formation," of crystals. The inorganic particles are not precipitated or
+thrown downward, any more than they are sublevated or thrown upward. The
+process is one of formation, not precipitation. Every crystallographer,
+not hampered by materialistic views and anti-vital theories, admits the
+presence of a fixed and determinate law governing each crystalline system,
+whatever may be the homologous parts or the unequal axes it represents.</p>
+
+<p>And so of the equally undeviating law of vital growth. Life comes from no
+mere "precipitation of organic molecules," as Dr. Bennett would have us
+believe. If so, what is it that precipitates the molecules? They can
+hardly be said to precipitate themselves. To precipitate, in a chemical
+sense, is to be thrown down, or caused to be thrown down, as a substance
+from its solution. What, then, causes the molecules to be thus
+precipitously thrown down from a fluid to a solid, or a semi-solid, state?
+It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the
+molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of
+nature--one presupposing an intelligent law-giver--to effect the
+"precipitating process," if any such really exists.</p>
+
+<p>But it does not exist. The first step is one of development and
+growth--the manifestation of functional activity--the building up of
+organic or cellular tissue. The exact process, in the case of seed-bearing
+plants and trees, is well known. All those familiar with the
+characteristic differences of seeds, their chemical constituents, their
+tegumentary coverings, rudimentary parts, etc., thoroughly understand the
+process in its outward manifestation. There is no precipitation of
+molecules as in an organic fluid, unless the albumen lying between the
+embryo and testa of the seeds, and constituting the nutriment on which the
+plant feeds during its primary stages of growth, can be called a fluid. It
+throws none of its characteristic ingredients downward any more than
+upward. Indeed the greater tendency of its molecules is upward rather than
+downward, in the "molecular processes" (vital ones) by which the embryonic
+cell is started upon its career of plant-life. The celebrated Dr. Liebig
+says of this albuminous environment: "It is the foundation, the
+starting-point, of the whole series of peculiar tissues which constitute
+those organs which are the seat of all vital actions." In the case of
+animal life, this albumen abounds in the serum of the blood, enters
+largely into the chyle and lymph, goes to build up the tissues and
+muscles, and is the chief ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the
+brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to
+coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries
+to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less
+insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140&deg; to 160&deg; F.</p>
+
+<p>When the seed is planted or placed in water, it first commences to swell
+from the absorption of the water or moisture of the ground by the pores of
+its external covering, the favorable temperature being from 60&deg; to 80&deg; F.
+It gradually expands until its outer membranes burst, and its initial
+rootlets clasp their hold upon the earth. From this point its several
+stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the
+first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a
+change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it
+would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in
+decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the
+grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the
+Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the
+decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened
+into life--ascends into the bright light, the warm sunshine, the
+refreshing presence of showers and dews. In this way it fulfils its
+providential purpose of yielding to the sower the more munificent life
+which he is forever seeking to attain.</p>
+
+<p>Its germination is the springing up of the inner living principle of the
+grain, not its outer envelope or dead husk. This disappears in decay,
+except the small nutrient portion within which the germinal principle of
+life would seem to reside, and which undergoes a thorough chemical change
+in the process of passing from death unto life, or being assimilated and
+taken up into the new living structure. The Apostle's comparison
+distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from
+death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still
+more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the
+dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher
+and more perfect life--the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in
+the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and
+co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally
+constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing
+agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the
+present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and
+decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most
+beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death,
+and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of
+life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="10"></a>Chapter X.</h2>
+
+<h3>Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-Point.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Granting that the assumption of Darwinism rests, as claimed, on the fixed
+and inflexible adaptation of means to ends, in the diversified yet
+measurably specialized processes of nature, there is no logical deduction
+to be drawn therefrom but that which traces the representatives of all the
+great types of the animal kingdom to one single source, and that not the
+Sovereign Intelligence of the Universe, but a mere "ovule in protoplasm,"
+or what may be defined, in its unaggregated form, as an inconceivably
+small whirligig, having motion on a central axis, but whether an
+independent motion of its own, or one derived from an Infinite
+Intelligence, the Darwinian systematizers are not bold enough to aver.
+They have too many <i>a priori</i> scruples either to assert the one
+proposition or to deny the other. What set this little whirligig in motion
+is a mystery that lies beyond the purview of science, so called, and into
+the depths of this infinitessimal and most mysterious little chamber they
+refuse to go.</p>
+
+<p>They search not for the evidence of an Infinite Intelligence in the
+outermost circle of the heavens where the highest is to be found, and
+where a bound is set that we may not pass, but shutting their eyes to all
+the grander evidences of such an Intelligence, they dive down into the
+infinitessimal realm of nature and assume to dig out the sublimer secrets
+of the universe there. And this is their grand discovery: That this
+infinitessimal whirligig of theirs has not only whirled man into
+existence, but the entire circle of the heavens, with the innumerable host
+of stars that march therein, and all the boundless systems of worlds that
+roll in space. With this subordination of the Infinite to the
+infinitessimal, of intelligence to insensate matter, of divine energy, so
+to speak, to blind molecular force, they are satisfied; and, like the mole
+in the fable, conceive their little molecule to be the only possible
+creator of a stupendous universe.</p>
+
+<p>Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating
+theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or
+the old adage, <i>omne vivum ex ovo</i>--all life is from an egg. For they
+assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in
+protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being
+this little <i>ovum</i> or cellule, from which have issued all possible
+organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory
+essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific co&ouml;rdination of its
+several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of this
+infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state of all
+matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of past time,
+not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so
+stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the
+first conception of it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of
+development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the
+reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the
+incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the
+"selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a
+beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things
+right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development
+begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he
+admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato,
+Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of
+legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."</p>
+
+<p>Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long
+one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined
+empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the
+universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive
+sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity
+for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena,
+in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away
+the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new
+varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in
+obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."</p>
+
+<p>In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be
+called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that,
+however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of
+uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not
+only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical
+deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of
+uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or
+approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in
+the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link
+connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest
+known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher
+congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no
+saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The
+heights of science are not to be scaled <i>per saltum</i>, except as degrees
+may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[<a href="#foot35">35</a>]</p>
+
+<p>There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like
+the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of
+amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and
+improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what
+page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back,
+has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the
+relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of
+the <i>Infusoria</i> possess the same or similar characteristics, and predicate
+relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants sometimes spring
+from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our diagnoses must be
+freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the chain of
+continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the imaginary
+foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most
+enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid
+partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been
+pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future
+discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science,
+inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no
+assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we
+constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of
+imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars
+into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of
+creation after truth.</p>
+
+<p>But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he
+meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the
+first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is
+from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate
+to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges
+it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his <i>primum
+mobile</i>--or on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the
+eye of imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not
+matter itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary
+constituent of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its
+unaggregated form, admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of
+comprehension; but rests entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here
+add that a system which begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in
+them--as that of bridging the chasmal difference between a gorilla and a
+Plato--can be dignified into a science only by a still greater stretch of
+the imagination--that of bridging the difference between the Darwinian
+zero and his ninety degrees of development in a Darwin himself!</p>
+
+<p>Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in
+philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists
+between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not
+self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic
+life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation
+existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of
+matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and
+there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as
+extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts
+are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction
+exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in
+our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where
+reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.</p>
+
+<p>And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once
+aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of
+these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have
+before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we
+follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the
+blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these
+intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found
+anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied
+upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as
+unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two
+ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No
+processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the
+elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual
+judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the
+world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to
+"Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary <i>datum</i> of
+consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on
+something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since
+science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged,
+furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of
+inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived,
+necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to
+the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its
+inseparable companion and guest.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in
+the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, <i>was</i> God,--or on Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and
+has only to go on <i>ad infinitum</i> to whirl us out a God, as it has already
+whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this ovulistic
+whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm and man,
+since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the process
+has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between man and
+Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us nature
+evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a God
+presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations of
+the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."</p>
+
+<p>These evolutionists manifestly get the cart before the horse in their
+category of cosmological events. It is not inert matter organizing itself
+into life, nor any mode of physical or chemical action, nor any mere
+manifestation of motion or of heat, nor any other conceivable correlation
+of natural forces. None of these has enabled us to penetrate the
+mysterious <i>inner-chamber</i> of life itself. For reasons obviously connected
+with our own welfare, He, from whom alone are "the issues of life," seems
+to have ordained that we should fathom the depths of both physical and
+chemical force, and beneficently wield and direct them to our own uses.
+But this vital force; this something that stands apart from and is
+essentially different from all other kinds of force, is of a nature that
+baffles all our efforts to approach. The power to grasp it, or even to
+penetrate in the slightest degree its mysteries, is delegated to none. All
+attempts to lay bare this principle of vitality, or level the barriers
+that separate it from physical or chemical action, have utterly failed. We
+know no more of its essence now than was known a thousand years ago, and
+know no less than will be known a thousand years hence. To become masters
+of the mystery, we must enter the impenetrable veil within which the
+Infinite Intelligence of the universe presides,--who, we are told,
+"sendeth forth his spirit, and we are created, who taketh away our breath,
+we die and return to our dust." [<a href="#foot36">36</a>]
+
+We are just as much bewildered in respect to this vital principle in our
+classifications of the myriads of little creatures careering over the
+field of the microscope, as when we turn to the most marked formations of
+genera and species in geological distribution. The great trouble with Mr.
+Darwin's <i>vinculum</i> is, that its weakest links are precisely where the
+strongest should be found, and <i>vice versa</i>. With a candor rarely
+displayed by a writer who is spinning a theory, he admits this. The
+geological record is not what he would have it to be. Whole chapters are
+gone where they are most needed, and nature's lithography seems constantly
+at fault. Independent species are now and then springing up where
+derivatives should be looked for, while derivatives are everywhere
+disappearing in non-derivatives. Many of the middle Tertiary <i>molusca</i>,
+and a large proportion of the later Tertiary period, are specifically
+identical with the living species, of to-day. What has "natural selection"
+been doing for this family in the last million years or more? Manifestly
+nothing, and less than nothing, for some of the species have dropped out
+altogether.</p>
+
+<p>These facts, and hundreds of others like them, are constantly obtruding
+themselves upon our attention to show, in harmony with the Bible Genesis,
+the immutability of species--the absolute fixity of types--rather than
+their variability, as claimed. If nature abhors anything more than a
+<i>vacuum</i>, it is manifestly any marked transition from fixed types, and she
+thunders her edicts against it in the non-fertility of all hybrids. The
+doctrine of variation lacks the all-essential element of continuity, and
+is oftener at war with the theory of the "selection of the fittest," than
+it is with the selection of the "unfit." The leap from Lepidosirens to
+Amphibians is no greater than the interval between any two species of
+animals or plants yet discovered, either fossil or living. The intervals
+are as numerous as the species themselves, and everywhere constitute great
+and sudden leaps, or such transitional changes as "natural selection"
+could not have effected independently of intervening forms--those that
+nowhere exist in nature, and never have existed, if we are to credit
+geologic and paleontologic records. There is everywhere similarity of
+structure, but not identity; and the nearer we approach to identity of
+structure the wider the divergence in similarity of characteristics. A
+bird may be taught to talk and sing snatches of music. But no monkey has
+ever been able to articulate human sounds, much less give them rhythmical
+utterance.</p>
+
+<p>Take the case of the wild pigeon, a subject that especially delights Mr.
+Darwin. Most of the deviations are confined to the domesticated breeds,
+and none of these rank in strength, hardiness, capability of flight, or
+symmetry of structure, with the wild or typical bird. There are
+well-defined deviations, but no sensible improvements, except to the eye
+of the bird-fancier. The deviations are simply entailed weaknesses, or the
+very reverse of what should appear from the "selection of the fittest."
+The fact undeniably is, that these variations are almost wholly
+abnormal--mere exaggerated characteristics, induced in the first instance,
+perhaps, by high cultivation and close in-and-in breeding.</p>
+
+<p>Turn these abnormal varieties loose, let them go back to the aboriginal
+stock, and these characteristics will rapidly disappear; that is, they
+will ultimately lose themselves or melt away in the original type. Mr.
+Darwin admits that the tendency will be to reversion, but he insists,
+manifestly without any positive proof therefor, that the greater tendency
+is to new centres of attraction, and not necessarily the primitive one.
+But this is mere assumption--sheer begging the question on his
+part,--since all the oscillations are incontestibly about the original or
+type centre.</p>
+
+<p>The same may be said of the typical races of men, like the negro and wild
+Indian of our prairies. You may lift them out of their primitive
+condition--temporarily suspend, if you please so to put it, their
+primordial attraction,--but, left again to themselves, they will go back
+to the original type; that is, their offspring will again infest the
+jungles and roam their native hunting-grounds. The process here is the
+very reverse of the Darwinian theory. Reversion, as a rule, follows the
+degeneracy of types, instead of there being any favorable homogeneous
+result, springing from a new centre of attraction. The Indian makes a
+splendid savage, but a very poor white man. Think of Red Jacket taking the
+part of Mercutio in the play or enacting the more valiant <i>role</i> of
+Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth. An infusion of white blood does not
+help the matter, but rather makes it worse. Generally, the meanest Indian
+on the continent is your half-breed, and among the negroes there is no
+term so expressive of the contempt of that race, as that applied by them
+to a mulatto. The present condition of Mexico affords a striking
+exemplification of this law of reversion. The inheritable characteristics
+or variations, produced from an infusion of Spanish blood, are rapidly
+disappearing--the native blood whipping out the European. The potency is
+in the inferior blood, simply because it is the predominating one. The
+result has been no homogeneous new race, but a reversion, now manifestly
+in progress, to the type centre or aboriginal stock. And the curse
+pronounced by Ezekiel upon mongrel tribes--"woe unto the mingled peoples"
+may have a significance in this connection worth considering; but it
+manifestly falls outside the scope of our present inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>In considering the embryological structure of man, and the homologies he
+therein presents to the lower animals, Mr. Darwin thus conclusively (in
+his judgment) remarks: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
+quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in
+his habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Darwin's pronominal "we," in this connection, admits of
+qualification. He can hardly speak for all the scientific world at once.
+The philosophical maxim of Sir Isaac Newton--<i>hypotheses non fingo</i>--I
+build no hypotheses, make no suppositions, but adhere to facts--has a few
+followers still left. But what are Mr. Darwin's facts? Has he yet
+discovered the caudal man, except as the ever-fertile Mr. Stanley heard of
+one in Africa? And where is his monkey that first lost the prehensile
+power to climb trees? For bear in mind that it was the loss of this
+prehensile power that resulted in the caudal atrophy of our monkey
+progenitors, <i>who became men simply because they were tailless monkeys!</i>
+They had lost their power to climb trees, and accordingly had no longer
+any use for tails to let themselves down from the limbs. A "beneficent
+necessity" therefore, according to Mr. Emerson, dropped the tail as
+something decidedly "unfit." For the simplest tyro in Darwinian philosophy
+will see that the loss of the Catarrhine monkey's tail, if it ever
+occurred, could not have resulted from the "selection of the fittest." The
+deeper Emersonian philosophy of the "rejection of the unfit," affords the
+only solution of the difficulty, and then only on the assumption that the
+tail is an unfit appendage for the monkey.</p>
+
+<p>With the loss of his tail, in the light of this new genesis, the monkey
+necessarily ceased to be arboreal in his habits. He could no longer
+subsist on the fruits and nuts of trees, or take refuge therein from his
+enemies. He had to go to work and make weapons to defend himself--to
+construct tools--make and set traps, live on his wits, and not on his
+prehensile power to climb trees. He soon discovered, of course, that the
+longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride
+towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic
+philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this
+was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more
+masterly feats of agility than ever,--those dependent, not on muscular
+function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow.
+Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he
+improved under this maternal instructor we are left to infer from the
+paramount conclusion of Mr. Darwin, <i>that the demoralized monkey became
+the incipient man</i>!</p>
+
+<p>But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
+differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the
+loss of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's
+brain? or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
+differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous
+and demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every
+bone, muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the
+same. The chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are
+differently bundled and differently strung. In intonations of
+voice--symmetry of arms, legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic
+and land habits, the frog is a much nearer approach to man than the
+monkey, as all caricaturists, delineating aldermanic proportions, will
+agree. And Mr. Darwin might have immortalized himself by deriving the
+builders of the ancient pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats
+and croakers of the Swiss lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For
+everybody knows, or thinks he knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he
+didn't wag it off, he certainly absorbed its waggishness as a
+distinguishing characteristic of the "coming man"--the future Artemas
+Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral origin will also
+account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all human
+juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
+relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
+encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
+on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
+agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
+loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor
+does he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated
+development." He is more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than
+any other, and finds the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That
+is, he assumes that among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the
+Tertiary or some other period, some female monkeys were less hirsute
+than others, and that they naturally preferred males possessing similar
+characteristics. These divergencies were thus commenced, and, by
+continuous "sexual selection," the infirmity (for such he regards the
+loss of hair) was propagated until the race was almost entirely denuded
+or bereft of this covering. In the same way he accounts for nearly all
+the differentiations of the race, among the various tribes now or
+formerly inhabiting the earth. All have sprung from the same semi-human
+progenitors--<i>apes that lost their capacity to subsist as apes, and
+hence found it necessary to subsist as men</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The law of degeneracy has, therefore, had quite as much to do with human
+origins as that of progressive development. In fact, it is the paramount
+law from a Darwinian stand-point. For the loss of hair and of the
+prehensile power to climb trees are both conceded by Mr. Darwin to be
+serious defects and drawbacks in the ape family.</p>
+
+<p>But the law of sexual selection, as treated by the evolutionists, is not
+scientifically accurate, nor is it true in fact. The loving tendency of
+nature is to opposites, not likes. The positive and negative poles are
+those that play into each other with most marvellous effect. Each repels
+its like and rushes to the embrace of its opposite. Extremes lovingly meet
+everywhere. A brunette selects a blonde and a blonde a brunette, as a
+general rule in matrimony. A tall man or woman, with rare exceptions,
+chooses a short companion for life. Dark eyes delight in those that are
+light, and <i>vice-versa</i>. Everywhere nature seeks diversity, not
+similitude. The gayest and brightest feathered songster craves
+companionship in modest and unobtrusive colors. Diversity is the law of
+life, as equality, or versimilitude, is that of death. Neither natural
+selection, nor sexual selection, runs counter to this law. If Mr. Darwin's
+theory were true, that likes selected likes, then the two marked extremes
+which should have characterized the race, soon after its emergence from
+the semi-human state, should have been giants and pigmies, Gargantuas and
+Lilliputs. Otherwise "sexual selection," as treated by its author, plays
+no intelligible part in the economy of nature, except to counterbalance
+variability, not to propagate it.</p>
+
+<p>But the Darwinian assumption that the primeval man, or his immediate
+ape-like progenitor, came through "natural selection," that is, through
+the "survival of the fittest," is subject to one or two other objections
+which we shall briefly notice. And the first objection is not altogether
+a technical one. The term "fittest," as applied to a monkey, has at once
+a definite and comprehensive significance to us. It implies the presence
+of whatever is most perfect of its kind in the monkey <i>as</i> a monkey, and
+not in the monkey <i>as</i> something else than a monkey. They are all
+admirably adapted for climbing trees; and it is this adaptation that
+secures them safety, or complete immunity, in shelter from their
+enemies. To say that nature selects the fittest for them--for any
+species of monkey--by converting their forefeet into rudimentary hands,
+with a loss of prehension and no corresponding advantages in locomotion,
+is to use language without any appreciable significance to us. We can
+only say that what is fittest for the monkey is ill-fitted for man, and
+the reverse. This is all we can definitely predicate of them, from what
+we know of their anatomical structure, and the diversified uses to which
+it may be put.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, as the Bible genesis shows, that every living thing is
+perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian
+variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of
+this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of
+Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth
+abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so,
+and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind,
+and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake is
+no less perfect than a Plato or a John Howard.</p>
+
+<p>When we consider man's upright position; the firmness and steadiness with
+which he plants his foot upon the earth; when we examine the mechanism of
+his hand, and the wonderful and almost unlimited range it possesses for
+diversified use; when we see how ill-fitted he is for climbing trees, yet
+how express and admirable for climbing among the stars, even to the
+outermost milky-way, the idea that what is fittest for him is fit for the
+chattering monkey, is too absurd to give us pause. And yet how does Mr.
+Darwin know that the monkey has been climbing up, all these hundred
+thousand or million years, into man, as one of the congenital freaks of
+nature, and not man shambling down into the monkey as a reverse
+congenital freak. Children have sometimes been born with a singular
+resemblance to the ape family, but no ape has ever, to Mr. Darwin's
+knowledge, produced issue more manlike than itself. The divergencies run
+the wrong way to meet the conditions of the development theory. We have
+had nearly five thousand years in which to mark these transitional
+changes, and yet the monkey of to-day is identical with that painted on
+the walls of ancient Meroe. In all this time he has made no advance in
+the genetic relation; and if we turn back the lithographic pages of
+nature for a hundred times five thousand years, we shall find no
+essential departure from aboriginal types.</p>
+
+<p>But the Darwinian hypothesis admits of a more conclusive answer than we
+have yet given. Past time, it will be conceded, is theoretically if not
+actually infinite; and in all past time, nature has been tugging away at
+Mr. Darwin's problem of the "survival of the fittest." It is no two
+hundred and fifty thousand years, nor two hundred and fifty millions, but
+an infinite duration of past time that covers the period in which she has
+been wrestling with this problem. How successfully has she solved it? In
+the Darwinian sense of the term "fittest," she has not so much as stated
+her first equation or extracted the root of her first power. She is
+manifestly as much puzzled over the problem as Mr. Darwin himself. He
+fails to see that the "survival of the fittest," necessarily implies, or
+carries with it, the correlative proposition,--the "non-survival of the
+unfit." And when such a law has been operative for an infinite duration of
+past time, the "unfit," however infinitely distributed at first, should
+have disappeared altogether, many thousands, if not millions, of years
+ago. If the evolutionists are dealing with vast problems, and assigning to
+nature, unlimited factors to express the totality of her unerring
+operations, they must be careful to limit the time in which any one of her
+given labors is to be accomplished. If she makes any progress at all, an
+infinite duration of past time should enable her to complete her work just
+as effectually as an infinite duration of time to come.</p>
+
+<p>But by what law of "natural selection," appertaining to a single pair of
+old world monkeys, have their offspring advanced to this regal state of
+manhood, while all other pairs have remained stationary, or precisely
+where they were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago or more? Why
+this exceptional divergence in the case of a single pair of monkeys? Why
+this anomalous, aberrant, and thoroughly eccentric movement on the part
+of nature? We had supposed that her operations were uniform--conformable
+to fixed laws of movement. The doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"
+implies this. Why then, should nature, in her unerring operations, have
+selected the fittest in respect to a single pair of Catarrhine monkeys,
+and at the same time rejected the fittest in the case of a million other
+pairs? If she had selected only the fittest in respect to this old world
+stock of monkeys, the entire Catarrhine family should have disappeared
+in the next higher or fitter group--a group nowhere to be found in
+geological distribution. The break between man and this Catarrhine
+monkey covers quite a series of links in the genetic vinculum;[<a href="#foot37">37</a>] and
+yet between the two we find no high form of a low type fitting into a
+low form of a high type, as we manifestly should, to account for all the
+diversified changes that must have taken place in the interim. And what
+is true of the types is measurably true of the classes within the types,
+as well as of the orders within the classes. Wide deviations in forms,
+as in characteristics, would seem to be the invariable rule; the
+blending of type into type, except perhaps in remote relationships, is
+nowhere visible.</p>
+
+<p>But if "variation" and "natural selection" have played important parts in
+the economy of nature, why may not "specific creation" have played <i>its</i>
+part also? Positive science can hardly flatter itself with the belief that
+it is rolling back the mystery of the universe to a point beyond which
+"specific creation" might not have commenced, or the divine fiat been put
+forth. To believe in the possibility of a rational synthesis, limited to
+sensible experience, or phenomenal facts within our reach, that shall
+climb from law to law, or from concrete fact to abstract conception, until
+it shall reach the <i>Ultima Thule</i> of all law, is to carry the faith of the
+scientist beyond the most transcendental belief of the theologian, and
+make him a greater dupe to his illusions than was ever cloistered in a
+monastery or affected austerity therein as a balm to the flesh. We may
+substitute new dogmatisms for old ones, but we can never postulate a
+principle that shall make the general laws of nature any less mysterious
+than the partial or exceptional, or that shall in the long run, render
+"natural selection" any more comprehensible, or acceptable to the rational
+intuition, than "specific creation." For while one class of scientists is
+climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law
+that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more
+analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by
+divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief
+of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage
+of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the
+human mind is ever towards this abstract conception--this one
+all-encompassing law of the universe. It steadily speculates in this
+direction, and some of the highest triumphs of our age, in physical as
+well as metaphysical science, are measurably due to this tendency. The
+scientific mind is not confined wholly to experimental research. It is
+stimulated to higher contemplations, and is constantly disposed to make
+larger and more comprehensive groupings of analogous facts. It is fast
+coming to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,
+chemical affinity, molecular force, and even Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig, as only so many manifestations or expressions of one and the
+same force in the universe--that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force
+(not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens,
+"binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his
+season, and guides Arcturus with his suns."</p>
+
+<p>It is the boast of the Darwinian systematizers that their development
+theory not only harmonizes with, but admirably supplements and out-rounds
+the grander speculation of Laplace, termed the "Nebular Hypothesis," which
+regards the universe as having originally consisted of uniformly diffused
+matter, filling all space, which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation, much after the manner of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig, into
+an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+space. Of the correctness of this hypothesis it is unnecessary to speak.
+It is to the Darwinian speculation what the infinite is to the
+infinitessimal, and we only refer to it to bring out the vastness of the
+conception as compared to the latter theory, and to predicate thereon the
+more conclusive induction that an Infinite Intelligence directs and
+superintends all.</p>
+
+<p>In an area in the Milky-way not exceeding one-tenth of the moon's disc,
+Mr. Herschel computes the number of stars at not less than twenty
+thousand, with clusters of nebulae lying still beyond. As we know that no
+bodies shining by reflected light could be visible at such enormous
+distances, we are left to conclude that each of these twinkling points is
+a sun, dispensing light and heat to probably as many planets as hold their
+courses about the central orb in our own system. From the superior
+magnitude of many of the stars, as compared with the sun, we may
+reasonably infer that many of these vast sun-systems occupy a much larger
+field in space than our own. This would give an area in space of not less
+than six thousand millions of miles as the field occupied by each of these
+sun-systems. And as the distance between each of these systems and its
+nearest neighbor is probably not less than that of our sun from the
+nearest star, we have the enormous and inconceivable distance of not less
+than nineteen billions of miles separating each one of these twenty
+thousand stars or sun-systems, occupying a space in the heavens apparently
+no bigger than a man's hand. And yet Infinity, as we apprehend the term,
+lies beyond this vast cluster of constellated worlds! Where is Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig in the comparison, or Mr. Emerson's vegetal
+stomach, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's "potential factors," to express the
+sum-total of all this totality,--this gigantic assemblage of stars
+clustered about a single point in the Milky-way? The human mind absolutely
+reels--staggers bewildered and amazed--under the load of conceptions
+imposed by these few twinkling stars, and is ready to exclaim,--</p>
+
+<blockquote>  "Oh, star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,<br />
+To waft us back a message of despair?"</blockquote>
+
+<p>But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible
+in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with
+inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of
+the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how
+unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of <i>Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig as the author of it all!</i> No wonder the inspired Psalmist
+exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
+his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens
+declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the
+immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration
+lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem,
+while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing
+beneath the glebe!</p>
+
+<p>And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre
+of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of
+sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the
+Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding
+all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central
+point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with
+nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must
+be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe,
+to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical
+induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their
+orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why
+not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and
+utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It
+can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it
+has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our
+post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that
+science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not
+Infinite Intelligence accomplish?</p>
+
+<p>But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a
+coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal
+only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize
+quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the
+theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to
+a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in
+climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when
+concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the
+ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G.
+Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also
+insists that when <i>a priori</i> speculation is lost in abstract conceptions,
+the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions of
+consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is
+undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we
+stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if
+in the august presence of Deity itself.</p>
+
+<p>But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of
+consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the
+universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In
+supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of
+Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of
+aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still
+going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or
+energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself
+in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the
+universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential
+energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already
+resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other
+heavenly bodies.[<a href="#foot38">38</a>] All the exterior planets, or a majority of them at
+least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled worlds, or those in
+which all life has hopelessly ceased and become extinct. All has utterly
+disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's couplets,</p>
+
+<blockquote>  "Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,<br />
+Nor glass can reach--from zoophyte to man."</blockquote>
+
+<p>All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many
+immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science,
+except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe,
+resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent
+clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian
+whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream,
+which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun
+extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless,
+and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it!
+Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers,
+and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a
+<i>credo</i> only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable
+the simple faith of the star-led Magi, who</p>
+
+<p>  "Deeming the light that in the east was seen
+       An earnest and a prophecy of rest
+     To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"</p>
+
+<p>came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to
+the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a href="notes"></a>Footnotes</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><a name="foot1"></a>1. : It may be proper, however, to state that the tenth and concluding
+     chapter was originally written as a lecture, and delivered about a
+     year ago in New Haven, Boston, and at other points. A request for its
+     publication has induced the author to place it in this volume, with
+     the portion referring to the Bible genesis omitted. It will be found
+     germane to the general subject.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot2"></a>2. : "Without this latent presence of the 'I am,' all modes of existence
+     in the external world flit before us as colored shadows, with no
+     greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of a rock hath in the
+     gliding stream, or the rainbow on the fast-sailing rain
+     storm."--<i>Coleridge's</i> "<i>Comments on Essays</i>."</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot3"></a>3. : And science that is not purely inductive--i.e. primarily based on
+     the inviolability of our intuitions--is no science at all, but the
+     sheerest possible speculation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot4"></a>4. : This presence of an active living principle in nature, one originally
+     assigned as the "<i>divina particula aur&aelig;</i>" of every living thing, is
+     frequently referred to in the higher inspirational moods of our
+     poets. Wordsworth exquisitely refers to it in the following lines of
+     his "Excursion:"--</p>
+
+<blockquote class="verse">       "To every form of being is assigned<br />
+       An <i>active</i> principle: howe'er removed<br />
+       From sense and observation, it subsists<br />
+       In all things, in all nature, in the stars<br />
+       Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds; <br />
+       In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone<br />
+       That paves the brooks."</blockquote>
+
+<p><a name="foot5"></a>5. : The existence of vital units is conceded by some of the staunchest
+     materialists, such as Herbert Spencer, Professor Bastian and others.
+     Professor Bastian says: "The countless myriads of living units which
+     have been evolved in different ages of the world's history, must, in
+     each period, have given rise to innumerable multitudes of what have
+     been called 'trees of life.'" He insists, however, that they have
+     been "evolved" from something, or by some unknown process. But we
+     shall show further on that a "unit" can neither be <i>evolved</i> nor
+     <i>involved</i>, and that this is as true of vital units as of the
+     mathematical or chemical unit. Neither evolution nor involution will
+     ever effect the value of a unit.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot6"></a>6. : According to Aristotle, the great world-<i>ordainer</i> is the constant
+     world-<i>sustainer</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot7"></a>7. : The definition which Professor Robinson, in his Lexicon of the New
+     Testament, gives of the word &sigma;&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&alpha;, as connected with the "divine
+     life," entirely harmonizes with this view of the subject. He says: Trop.
+     I John 3, 9, &pi;&#x1F03;&sigmaf; &#x1F79; &gamma;&epsilon;&gamma;&epsilon;&nu;&eta;&mu;&#x03AD;&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf; &#x1F10;&kappa; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon; &thetasym;&epsilon;&omicron;&upsilon; &sigma;&pi;&#x03AD;&rho;&mu;&alpha; &#x1F00;&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&nu; (&thetasym;&epsilon;&#x1F44;&nu;) &epsilon;&nu; &#x1FB6;&nu;&tau;&#x1FF6; &pi;&epsilon;&nu;&epsilon;&#x1F76;
+     <i>i.e.</i> the germ or principle of divine life through which he
+     is begotten of god, &tau;&omicron; &pi;&nu;&epsilon;&#x1F52;&mu;&alpha;.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot8"></a>8. : Professor Schmidt, of the University of Strasburg, who insists that
+     species are only relatively stable, admits that they remain
+     persistent as long as they exist under the same external conditions.
+     Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species. Nor are
+     environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions
+     results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of
+     conditions results in their appearance.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot9"></a>9. : Says M. Ch. Bonnet, in his "La Paling&eacute;u&eacute;sie Philosophique;" "Il est
+     de la plus parfaite &eacute;vidence que la matiere est susceptible d'une
+     infinit&eacute; de mouvemens divers, et de modifications diverses," and this
+     is the universal claim of the materialists.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot10"></a>10. : Professor Burdach (as trad, par Jourdan), in speaking of the
+      productive power of nature, says, "Limit&eacute;e quant &aacute; l' &eacute;tendue de ses
+      manifestations, elle continue toujottrs d' agir pour la conservation
+      de ce qui a &eacute;t&eacute; cr&eacute;&eacute;, et, quoiqu' elle ne maintenue les formes
+      organiques sup&eacute;rieures que par la seule propagation, il ne r&eacute;pugne
+      point au bon sens de penser qu' aujourd' hui encore elle a la
+      puissance de produire les formes inf&eacute;rieures avec des el&eacute;ments
+      h&eacute;t&eacute;rog&eacute;nes, comme elle a cr&eacute;&eacute; originairement tout ce qui poss&eacute;de l'
+      organisation." This shows that its author believed in the
+      possibility of the "superior organic forms," like the mastodon,
+      megatherium, etc. from the "heterogenetic elements"--those
+      undergoing every conceivable change--as well as the "inferior
+      forms." At all events, it is a legitimate induction from
+      materialistic premises.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot11"></a>11. : This point is conclusively made by Professor Burdach, who says (we
+      quote from Jourdan); "La tendance interieure &aacute; la configuration
+      existe avant sa manifestation." And by his <i>tendance interieure</i> he
+      must mean some vital or other law, equivalent to an <i>entia</i> in
+      matter, which results <i>in</i>, not <i>from</i> manifestation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot12"></a>12. : Goethe borrowed his idea of an archetypal world from Plato and the
+      Eleatic school. They held that the world was originated, and not
+      eternal; that it was framed by the Creator after a perfect
+      archetype, one eternally existing in the divine mind, if not an
+      actual soul-world of which our own is but the reflex.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot13"></a>13. : In a note to Prof. Bastian's "Beginnings of Life" (vol II. p. 537)
+      an important fact is mentioned as obtained from the writings of Dr.
+      Schneider, to wit, that <i>Nematoids</i> (microscopical forms) may be
+      "obtained at will," almost as readily as mushrooms, by a process
+      entirely independent of spores. For instance, small pieces of beef
+      were carefully examined to see if they contained any of the ova of
+      Nematoids, and, finding none, they were buried in a small quantity
+      of earth (also carefully examined for the presence of Nematoids or
+      their ova) in a gallipot. "After three weeks," says Prof. B. "this
+      earth was found to be absolutely swarming with two kinds of
+      Nematoids--quite different from any forms which I had previously,
+      seen, although I had been seeking them for more than two years
+      previously in all sorts of situations." The reason why he had not
+      found them previously, was because the "necessary conditions" for
+      their appearance had not been obtained by him, or he had not sought
+      for them in their proper environment. They were not produced "at
+      will," but were the natural outgrowth of conditions, as much so as
+      the spores of fungi, which make their appearance whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions exist. According to Dr.
+      Gros, it takes about three weeks for these Nematoid forms to develop
+      into a reproductive state.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot14"></a>14. : The necessity of turning plants and animals into "tramps" is just as
+      great in the case of "Evolution" as in that of "specific creation in
+      pairs." In both cases, we must insist upon geneological
+      consanguinity. For the chances of any two highly specialized forms,
+      originally starting on different lines of divergence, and ultimately
+      reaching individual identity, both in form and characteristics, is
+      an impossible problem in the determination of chances. Consequently,
+      Mr. Darwin finds the necessity of accounting for the presence of
+      northern forms in the southern hemisphere, and the reverse, just as
+      great as in the Linn&aelig;an theory, which was fully accepted by Cuvier.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot15"></a>15. : Burdach, in his "<i>Trait&eacute; Physiologie" (Trad. par Jourdan</i>. 1837)
+      says: "Effectivement nous rencontrons des traces de vie dans toute
+      existence quelconque." This is as broad a panspermic statement as
+      can be made, and is only true of inorganic matter so far as
+      vegetable life is concerned, including such infusorial, mycologic,
+      and cryptogamic forms as may lie so near to the "force vegetative"
+      of Needham as to be indistinguishable from it.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot16"></a>16. : In the case of volcanic islands, the upheavals were undoubtedly
+      accompanied by deposits of mud, sand (ocean detritus), marine
+      vegetation, and more or less animal matter, and these organic
+      substances were washed down by the rains into the broken valleys and
+      plains below, when land vegetation almost immediately made its
+      appearance; not because seeds may have drifted thither by any of the
+      different agencies that have been mentioned, but because organic
+      matter can no more help bringing forth life in some form, when
+      conditions favor, than salt water, when exposed to evaporation, can
+      help crystallizing into its symmetrically-arranged salts. And the
+      same would be true of all the coral islands, bringing up the organic
+      matter of the sea to the influence of the light, the rains, and the
+      dews. The islands thus formed in the Pacific Ocean begin to exhibit
+      vegetable life almost as soon as they make their appearance above
+      the reefs, and a line of sea-beach is formed about them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot17"></a>17. : These, while presenting the most varied and diverse forms of
+      infusorial life, are nevertheless the most constant and abundant
+      type. They abound more or less in all organic infusions. Ehrenberg,
+      however, holds that they are no more animal than vegetal forms. They
+      vary in length from 1/15000 to 1/2000 of an inch, and are
+      consequently too minute to be satisfactorily classified in respect
+      to all their diversified characteristics.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot18"></a>18. : The extent of the southern ice-cap may at least be approximately
+      reached from explorations already made. Capt. Weddell, in 1823,
+      extended his explorations southward to within about 15&deg; of the
+      south pole, where he found an open sea. Capt. Ross, in 1842,
+      approached to within about 13&deg; of the same pole, without serious
+      obstruction. It is true that, in the following year, he encountered
+      ice barriers near the line of the antarctic circle, but they were
+      floating barriers coming down from Weddell's open sea. Capt.
+      Wilkes, in 1840, explored a considerable portion of the Antarctic
+      Continent, lying almost entirely within the antarctic circle. Other
+      explorations have been made, showing that the southern ice-cap does
+      not probably extend, continuously at least, much farther north than
+      78&deg; or 80&deg;, or to within some ten or twelve degrees of the south
+      pole, independently of the packs of drifting ice in the otherwise
+      open seas.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot19"></a>19. : The truth or falsity of "Evolution" depends entirely on the
+      successful solution of this problem, for the chances are
+      quintillions to ones that no two identical forms could have
+      originated from different centres, or from the same centre on
+      divergent lines, and ever reached identically the same results. And
+      how any two forms should happen to be sexually paired, on the same
+      or different lines of divergence, is one of those inexplicable
+      mysteries which must puzzle Herbert Spencer in all his labyrinthian
+      searches into "Force-correlation," "Differentiation," "the Dynamic
+      Force of Molecules," etc., etc. However successful he may be in
+      other directions, he will inevitably fail in this. We must fall back
+      on the grand Old Bible genesis for the solution of this difficulty,
+      where every living thing was commanded to produce seed, or multiply
+      and replenish the waters and the earth with offspring.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot20"></a>20. : These transcendental or ideal forms may be said to correspond to the
+      "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are the eternal, immutable
+      principles which are discernible to the eye of the soul, as the
+      sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of the
+      body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a
+      higher realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of
+      which the objective reality is but the shadow.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot21"></a>21. : Herbert Spencer may be quoted as authority on this point. He says:
+      "There is invariably, and necessarily, a conformity between the
+      vital functions of any organism, and the <i>conditions</i> in which it is
+      placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a certain range
+      of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation."
+      And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora, each
+      specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north
+      or south from the thermal equator.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot22"></a>22. : Speaking of the ultimate principles or elements of matter, Plato is
+      quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with modest diffidence, "God alone,
+      and those whom he loves among men, know what they are." It is only
+      those who seek to eliminate God from the universe that speak with
+      confident flippancy on the subject of molecular machinery and
+      force-correlations.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot23"></a>23. : As long as the evolutionists cannot agree among themselves as to
+      what constitutes the process of evolution, it can hardly be expected
+      that the public will accept their speculations as conclusive
+      inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to the
+      doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many
+      objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word
+      Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot24"></a>24. : "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of
+      God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot25"></a>25. : Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the "Protoplasmic Theory of Life,"
+      says: "Matter cannot change its state of motion or rest without the
+      influence of some force from without. True spontaneity of movement
+      is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what we call dead
+      matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an exciting
+      cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial
+      impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this
+      "force from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle
+      operating to effect the otherwise impossible change in matter.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot26"></a>26. : A favorite set-phrase of Professor Bastian in speaking of
+      morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes calls them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot27"></a>27. : That great and justly celebrated naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of
+      the universal origination of the lower forms of animal life by a
+      process termed, in his time, "spontaneous generation," says: "There
+      are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal and vegetable,
+      which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'mol&eacute;cules
+      organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a
+      constant succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for
+      some time associated with the Abb&eacute; Needham in his experiments in
+      vital directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by
+      no means certain that he did not accept the Abb&eacute;'s "force
+      v&eacute;g&eacute;tative" in place of his more materialistic views respecting
+      "mol&eacute;cules organiques." At all events, his statement that as many
+      living things appear in nature independently of reproducing causes
+      as by successive generation, is no doubt true.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot28"></a>28. : M. Tr&eacute;viranus, who followed Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask
+      experimentations, first noticed the important fact that the
+      animalcul&aelig; appearing in different organic infusions, depended on
+      the nature and quality of the infusions themselves, and that the
+      changed conditions of the same infusion produced new and independent
+      forms of life.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot29"></a>29. : Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet, says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin
+      &eacute;toit la religion &eacute;ternelle des Essences; parce que tout ce qui
+      existe existoit comme de toute &eacute;ternit&eacute; comme possible ou en id&eacute;e
+      dans l'entendement de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette v&eacute;rit&eacute; sublime en
+      d'autres termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute Eternit&eacute;
+      dans l'entendement du Supr&ecirc;me Architecte. Tou tes les parties de
+      l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome &eacute;toient deffin&eacute;s dans ce plan.
+      Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux diff&eacute;rentes pieces de
+      ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs repr&eacute;sentations. Chaque etre y
+      &eacute;toit figur&eacute; par ses characteres propres: et l'acte par lequel la
+      Souveraine Puissance a r&eacute;alis&eacute; ce plan, est ce que nous nommons la
+      Cr&eacute;ation."</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot30"></a>30. : Here is a fact given us by Dr. F. Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a
+      peat meadow in that town, owned by him, which was at no time subject
+      to overflow, a large quantity of peat had been removed at different
+      intervals of time, when the excavations naturally filled with water.
+      In these excavations there appeared not only the <i>Cyprinidae</i> in
+      considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which grew to be as
+      large as those in the most favored streams. They made their
+      appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and
+      have flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow
+      were there any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any
+      other source of water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot31"></a>31. : Professor Beale, in one of his very latest works says: "Of the
+      chemical and physical forms of energy something is known, but of
+      the relationship of the so called <i>vital</i> energy, nothing has
+      been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is
+      altogether different from that which has been traced to physical
+      and chemical energy."</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot32"></a>32. : It is admitted, even in the case of <i>Bacteria</i>, whose movements are
+      the most uniform, that they are sometimes so inert and languid as to
+      show no movements at all; while, at other times, they exhibit mere
+      Brownian movements or those no more nearly allied to "life" than the
+      minute particles of carbon escaping from the flame of a kerosene
+      lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists, it is a
+      question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most
+      active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in
+      other words, whether they are <i>Fungus-spores</i> or <i>Torula</i>-cells, or
+      whether they may not be some intermediate forms.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot33"></a>33. : The difficulty of assigning any definitional value to a "primordial
+      germ" is due to the vagueness of idea attached to it in the popular
+      mind, as well as to the diversified theories and speculations of the
+      scientists concerning the origin of life. We can only define it as a
+      "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest conceivable
+      quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical unit."</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot34"></a>34. : Let two comrades be shot at the same instant in battle, the one
+      through the heart, and the other through the arm, shattering it
+      badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from taking a piece of
+      bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart and instantly
+      killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still living?
+      Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He
+      may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts
+      might still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the
+      integrity of the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply
+      because the vital principle that differentiates matter is gone--can
+      no longer act. If the integrity of the bone depended on the action
+      of the molecules, and not on the vital principle, there is no reason
+      why this experiment should not be a success. For the molecules are
+      all there, and their action will not be disturbed for hours after
+      the death of the man shot through the heart.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot35"></a>35. : It is safe to adhere to the Leibnitzian axiom, <i>Natura non agit
+      saltatim</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot36"></a>36. : One of the most cultured classes of Christian believers in our day,
+      holds that "all life is from the Lord;" that "He is the fountain,
+      and we only the streams thence." And this, they claim, is true of
+      all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to cut off this
+      stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the fountain
+      of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause a
+      mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their
+      intermediates.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot37"></a>37. : Professor Marsh, of Yale College, has predicted that the "missing
+      link" will be found in Borneo--evidently not crediting Mr. Stanley's
+      statement about its presence in the interior of Africa. But one
+      "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an extensive
+      family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest
+      genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half
+      cover the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey
+      and the man being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the
+      first half of the chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions
+      of links, so to speak. How, then, is the greater length of the
+      plexus to be covered by a single "missing link?" A long line of
+      caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore, in Borneo, and shipped to
+      the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous stretch in the chain of
+      animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for. Borneo must be
+      exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the chasm
+      between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal
+      inhabitants, of that island.</p>
+
+<p><a name="foot38"></a>38. : This daring hypothesis of the materialists is so utterly repugnant
+      to all our ideas of a perfected Cosmos, that we have no patience
+      with those advancing it. It is, at best, speculation run mad, and is
+      based on no other assumption than that of the inherent
+      imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God, or
+      from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast
+      geognostic epochs.</p>
+
+<p>      From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility
+      inevitably runs into the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. For if, in the play
+      of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past
+      time has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting
+      movements and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite
+      duration of time to come can effect nothing but similarly mutual
+      adjustments and re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an
+      infinity of time, space, matter and motion, everywhere presenting a
+      unity of phenomena in the universe, "there can never be anything,"
+      according to the great Stagirite, "unconnected or out of place, as
+      in a bad tragedy." Conservation must, therefore, be the rule, and
+      desinence the impossible exception.</p>
+
+<p>      But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact
+      of vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly
+      appeared, and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as
+      suddenly disappeared, to show that there are mighty disturbances in
+      the sidereal heavens which entirely negative the idea of
+      "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the phenomena of variable
+      stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and
+      fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and
+      well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of
+      extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of
+      Tycho Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the
+      interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty
+      non-luminous or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their
+      respective centres of light and heat, as the attending planets
+      revolve about the common centre of gravity in our own system. And
+      this is especially true of that vast and fathomless star-stratum,
+      called the Milky-way, in which most of these peculiar phenomena
+      occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.</p>
+
+<p>      That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable
+      transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no
+      matter of wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising
+      that these sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater
+      frequency. This would inevitably be the case if the planes of
+      revolution, in the case of these non-luminous bodies about their
+      central orbs, were coincident with the lines of vision from our own
+      planet--a circumstance by no means improbable from the vastness of
+      the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of stars marching
+      therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be accounted for
+      in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their apparent
+      rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our
+      sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation
+      Hercules at the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of
+      Arcturus' flight), it is impossible to determine, in the present
+      state of astronomical knowledge, whether the apparent change of
+      place in any star is real or merely optical. But, in the case of
+      double stars, each is travelling (independently of its other
+      motions) about the common centre of gravity obtaining in its own
+      system, and these relative movements may account for the greater or
+      less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one, present a
+      greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.</p>
+
+<p>      The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus
+      destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified
+      in our own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With
+      stupendous planetary systems revolving about each of these
+      apparently double stars, they must respectively have a revolution,
+      real as well as apparent, about their own centres of gravity--not
+      one and the same centre, but different and far distant centres.
+      Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with planes of movement at
+      right angles with it, they would necessarily present the appearance
+      of one star revolving about the other--an <i>apparent</i> motion only.</p>
+
+<p>      And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of
+      <i>temporary</i> stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens,
+      flaming up into stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and
+      then disappearing altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or
+      <i>apparent</i> stars, was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its
+      maximum brilliancy at the very first, but gradually diminishing in
+      size until the end of seventeen months, when it disappeared, without
+      change of place, from the heavens. This temporary star was visible
+      in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the Milky-way, within whose swarm of
+      stellar worlds most of these apparent stars have made their
+      appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for this stellar
+      phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed and
+      molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the
+      elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses
+      (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation
+      of "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is
+      manifestly too absurd for scientific recognition. A more
+      satisfactory explanation may be here suggested:--Supposing the
+      apparent relative position of any six or seven stars of the sixth
+      magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed by the combined
+      motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as to throw
+      them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered together
+      as to show their several star-discs as one, we should unquestionably
+      have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as long as
+      this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after
+      another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the
+      combined motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from
+      the first to the second magnitude, and so on until it reached the
+      sixth magnitude, when it would pass beyond the reach of unaided
+      human vision. But as the star of Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at
+      its fullest brilliancy, it may be objected that this suggested
+      theory fails to meet the required conditions.</p>
+
+<p>      As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the
+      Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction
+      of stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a
+      century. We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded
+      stars, in great numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that
+      these temporary stars almost uniformly appear in that zone renders
+      the suggestion here made quite as rational, in the way of
+      speculation at least, as that of "vapory celestial matter" suddenly
+      condensed into a star of the first magnitude, as Sir. William
+      Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not probable.</p>
+
+<p>      Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of
+      stars, lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various
+      parts of the heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance
+      of a star of the fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if
+      more thickly clustered, present that of a star of the first
+      magnitude. But powerful telescopes resolve them into a large number
+      of stars, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth magnitude. One such
+      cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been resolved into not less than
+      fifteen hundred small stars of very low magnitude, and pretty widely
+      scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander Von Humboldt, in
+      speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that "their
+      disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any
+      diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces
+      or in their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too
+      weak too excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no
+      longer see is not necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same
+      time the question of Pliny--"<i>Stell&aelig; an obirent nascerenturve?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>      But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of
+      these stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There
+      are, for instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant
+      clusters of stars, dark granular spots, of greater or less
+      magnitude, in which the most powerful telescopes show no glints or
+      traces of stars. They are among Humboldt's smaller "fissures or
+      chasms in the heavens," in which he asserts that there is a great
+      paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if one of these thick stellar
+      clusters, which show to the naked eye as a single star, should, by
+      the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system and the stellar
+      group in question, pass into the field of one of these small rents
+      or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of the
+      stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the
+      first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that
+      magnitude so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or
+      fissure. It would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in
+      the clouds of a dark night, and disappear as soon as it had
+      traversed, or apparently traversed, the rift in question. This
+      galactic curtain, it should be borne in mind, is made up of
+      18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less than 720,000,000
+      dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of
+      gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this is
+      unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of
+      the more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch,
+      even in the telescopic field, mere glints of light as the
+      intervening swarms of stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the
+      foreground and shut out the more distant view. It is only through
+      these rents and fissures in this great galactic curtain that the
+      brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever be seen; and these glints
+      of far distant light, showing dimly through this curtain, may
+      account for the peculiar <i>milky</i> appearance of the galaxy, arising
+      from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams themselves. It
+      was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic curtain
+      that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its
+      appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained
+      visible for a period of seventeen months.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+
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+Title: Life: Its True Genesis
+
+Author: R. W. Wright
+
+Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9307]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 19, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+Life: Its True Genesis
+
+By R. W. Wright
+
+
+
+
+[Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--
+
+Οὗ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ χατὰ γένος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. [Septuagint.]
+
+"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
+upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]
+
+Second Edition
+
+1884
+
+
+
+RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
+TO
+ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.
+OF CHESHIRE, CONN.
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+Prefatory
+
+Chapter I.    Introductory.
+Chapter II.   Life--Its True Genesis.
+Chapter III.  Alternations of Forest Growths.
+Chapter IV.   The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+Chapter V.    Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+Chapter VI.   Distribution and Permanence of Species.
+Chapter VII.  What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+Chapter VIII. Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+Chapter IX.   Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+Chapter X.    Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.
+
+
+
+
+Preface to Second Edition.
+
+
+
+Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
+that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
+thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
+spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
+is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
+the tenth verse:
+
+"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
+thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (_the earth_) bring forth
+and bud (_not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth_), that it (_the
+earth_) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (_man being the
+only sower of seed and eater of bread_): so shall my Word be (_the Word of
+Life_) that goeth forth out of my mouth (_the mouth of the Lord_); it
+shall not return unto me void (_i.e., lifeless_), but it shall accomplish
+that which I (_the Lord Jehovah_) please, and it (_the living Word_) shall
+prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
+
+This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
+hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
+and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
+come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
+tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
+shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
+and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
+"Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
+nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
+conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
+by the divine fiat.
+
+In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
+this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
+In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
+Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
+history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
+volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
+flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
+on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
+and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
+vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
+as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
+the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
+There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
+in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
+remarkable formula is taken.
+
+We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
+as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
+instead of God, in their philosophical writings.
+
+As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after _Truth_ as it is to be
+found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of
+science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is
+only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no
+foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a
+lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing
+more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to
+accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner
+than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to
+others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following.
+But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with
+being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a
+scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.
+
+When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
+years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
+we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
+for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
+have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
+they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
+referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
+Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
+the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
+toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
+life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
+ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
+nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
+forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
+without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
+to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
+food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
+dead batrachian inside of one year.
+
+This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
+between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
+finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
+riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
+there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
+the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
+these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
+any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.
+
+The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
+Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
+and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
+boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
+force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
+characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
+sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
+the road-sides, and the _débris_ scraped into the centre of the road-beds;
+the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside
+rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break
+the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones
+etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in
+length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that
+they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no
+trace of a mother toad in connection with them.
+
+The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
+early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
+propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
+they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
+any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
+circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
+in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
+appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
+is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
+by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
+made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
+Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
+sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
+taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
+the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.
+
+What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
+almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
+inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
+the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
+where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
+It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
+of the town.
+
+The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
+of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
+in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
+he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
+expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
+on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
+enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
+not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
+blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
+out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common _Rana_
+family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
+similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
+reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
+apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.
+
+Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet
+into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water
+secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as
+well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they
+wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog,
+originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would
+make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well
+enough as one of the _Rana_ family. It was only to our more intelligent
+neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we
+stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it
+appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are
+equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water
+from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm
+sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting.
+The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing
+their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young
+wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the
+open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch
+out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest
+study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the
+proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable
+modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the
+tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn
+months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to
+ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the
+development of this little pest of the _Culex_ family, independently of
+the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a
+little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the
+netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as
+every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated
+on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into
+a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly
+devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the
+full-fledged mosquito is reached.
+
+All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
+experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
+demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
+covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
+harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
+water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
+their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
+world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
+we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
+Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
+in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
+acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
+the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
+convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
+ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
+may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
+for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
+question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
+now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
+Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
+that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
+have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
+mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
+little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
+knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
+about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
+especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
+knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
+Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
+the same becoming courtesy.
+
+In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
+"Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
+more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.
+
+Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
+other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
+the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
+conspicuously in the historic page.
+
+When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
+frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
+operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
+us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
+batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
+highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
+that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
+earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
+vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
+in the beginning.
+
+One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
+scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
+have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
+diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
+centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
+environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
+living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
+thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
+their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
+pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
+went forth.
+
+As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
+life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
+Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural
+_habitat_ of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that
+the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the
+extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is
+manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the
+common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller
+mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,
+as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt
+sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long
+thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without
+the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped
+along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will
+be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and
+not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,
+locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale
+the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters
+from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that
+these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing
+conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes
+its appearance.
+
+There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
+another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
+from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
+nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
+the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
+appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
+previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
+than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
+bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
+will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
+not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
+dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
+of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
+acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
+out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
+and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
+months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
+specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.
+
+Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
+University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
+for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
+as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
+the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
+the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
+in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
+periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
+strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
+text; as, for instance, the _Trilobites_, occurring so abundantly in what
+is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance,
+whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil,
+characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much
+in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the
+presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of
+the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of
+these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long
+enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked
+the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest
+scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.
+
+All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
+governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "_similia
+similibus gignuntur_"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains
+universally. The _Graptolites_, occurring in the bituminous shales of the
+Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to
+which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of
+natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the
+fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible
+teaches us.
+
+When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
+minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
+Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
+rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
+great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
+induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
+he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
+several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
+be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
+Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.
+
+When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
+than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
+true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
+spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
+command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
+of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
+study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
+every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
+amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
+paper on the _Archæopterix_, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a
+case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing
+a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was
+trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every
+one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.
+
+It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
+not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
+have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
+the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
+strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
+upon the Matterhorn!
+
+Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
+be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
+the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
+of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
+least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
+themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
+that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
+the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
+mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
+"Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
+the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
+period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
+physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
+expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
+materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
+and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
+took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
+we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
+which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
+least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
+defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
+Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
+English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
+pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
+Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
+Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
+other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
+twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
+events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
+place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
+unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
+is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
+appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.
+
+When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
+of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
+of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
+institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
+know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
+command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
+not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
+of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
+power of life in matter.
+
+That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
+their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
+asserts they originally came from.
+
+And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
+thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
+earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
+changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
+energy intervene!
+
+"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
+our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
+material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
+his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
+the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
+word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
+sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
+purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
+light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
+with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
+millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!
+
+In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
+the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
+over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
+it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
+takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
+where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
+higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
+dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
+Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
+Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
+of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
+We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
+conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
+for good or for evil.
+
+We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
+our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
+doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
+at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to _The
+National Quarterly Review_, for the captious manner in which it treated us
+after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
+two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a
+class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and
+enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
+criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
+thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
+several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
+had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
+as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
+handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
+science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
+materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
+the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
+adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
+so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
+respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
+content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
+fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
+waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
+of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
+and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
+Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
+by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
+unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
+demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
+was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
+writer's own face.
+
+But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
+in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
+indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
+our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as _The National
+Quarterly Review_ speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
+friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.
+
+If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
+if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
+for them to regret, and for us to deplore.
+
+To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
+thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
+what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
+thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:
+
+  "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,
+  Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow
+  With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been
+  All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,
+  Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain
+  The long night through, and wake at early dawn
+  To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"
+
+R. W. Wright.
+
+West Cheshier, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+Prefatory.
+
+
+
+The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
+public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
+introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
+may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
+salutation untouched.
+
+The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
+traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
+and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
+conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: _That the
+primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
+things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
+they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions exist_.
+
+The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
+the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
+the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
+The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
+Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
+Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
+biblical and scientific scholar.
+
+In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
+that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
+named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
+we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
+imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
+into the same lines of incidence in human thought.
+
+Science has long taught that the _absence_ of necessary physiological
+conditions results everywhere in the _disappearance_ of vital phenomena;
+by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the _presence_ of
+these necessary conditions results everywhere in the _appearance_ of vital
+phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it
+is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after
+each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand
+years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved
+the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither
+sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have
+anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each
+yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life)
+was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its
+appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural
+seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.
+
+And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
+the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
+forests where pine have been cleared away, and _vice versa_, in some parts
+of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So
+with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
+over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
+glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
+find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
+without the possible intervention of natural seeds.
+
+The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
+Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
+years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
+undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
+century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
+roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
+them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
+of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
+the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
+points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
+subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.
+
+According to Irenæus, this Greek version was rendered at the request of
+Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library,
+and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic
+scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed
+upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to
+our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most
+conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis
+of life" we derive therefrom.
+
+Σπέρμα (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical
+signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "_germ_ of anything,"
+or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives
+or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of
+"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no
+plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which
+seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more
+comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of
+life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used
+it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms
+σπερματ´κοὶ γόγοι expressing "the _laws of generation contained in
+matter_"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual
+connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let
+the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
+yielding fruit after his kind, _whose germinal principle of life, each in
+itself after its kind, is upon the earth_"
+
+We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
+complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
+scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
+Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.
+
+But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
+The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
+rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
+development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
+do with the '_odium theologicum_?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both
+theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
+agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
+scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
+nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
+the Hebrew _Hagiographa_, of what less value is it to science than if it
+had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
+inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
+science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
+Herbert Spencer?
+
+Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
+all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
+longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
+operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
+speculation to pry. We know what nature _does_, or may know it by the
+proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
+than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
+the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
+science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
+without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
+an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
+tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
+land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
+bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
+as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
+endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
+requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
+oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
+primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
+organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
+gemmule, thousands of years ago.
+
+He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
+thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
+our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
+theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
+rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
+transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
+_molécules organiques_, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
+"life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulæ,
+with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
+or twenty years.
+
+Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
+speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
+and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
+motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
+the public. [1]
+
+R. W. Wright.
+
+West Cheshire, Conn.
+
+
+
+
+
+True Genesis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Introductory.
+
+
+
+It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
+speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
+tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
+utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
+conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
+prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
+current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
+rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
+more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
+speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
+have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
+substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
+persistent elements in the universe--_Matter_ and _Motion_. Everything
+else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else
+essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
+theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
+two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
+conclusions respecting matter.
+
+Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
+and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
+claim, of one and the same force in the universe--_Motion_, With the
+exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
+ever active and reactive agency.
+
+Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
+more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
+or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
+postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
+of molecules.
+
+Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
+Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
+unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
+stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
+special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
+transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
+exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
+its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
+because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
+averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+
+And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
+speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
+among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
+last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
+who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
+the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
+as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
+ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
+the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
+dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
+life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
+mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
+of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
+non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
+the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
+beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
+or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
+all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, _de
+novo_? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly
+allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied
+to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to
+provoke both incredulity and derision.
+
+The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
+professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
+as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
+most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
+of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
+and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
+enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
+laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
+putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
+cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
+dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
+mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
+the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
+nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
+nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
+conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.
+
+But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
+greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
+either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
+logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
+only a negative conclusion shall follow.
+
+"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.
+
+Life is neither matter nor motion,
+
+Therefore: Life is not indestructible.
+
+This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
+distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
+incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
+neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
+thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
+illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
+that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
+without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
+embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
+have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
+to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
+such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
+realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
+that this conscious _ego_--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes
+attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the
+order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we
+are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the
+theological conception of a God--the one supreme _Ego_ of the
+universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
+apprehensive intelligence, is derived.
+
+We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
+order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
+constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
+inductions:--
+
+1. Cause must exist before effect.
+
+2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preëxisting as a cause, there
+can be no life-manifestation.
+
+3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.
+
+4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.
+
+5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
+an effect?
+
+6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
+both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
+incongruent and conflictive judgment.
+
+7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
+whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.
+
+8. Hence Life, either as a preëxisting cause or vital agency, must precede
+both animal and vegetal organism.
+
+Again:--
+
+9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
+which is produced by an operating cause.
+
+10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
+as an operating cause.
+
+11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
+must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
+cause before there is any produced effect.
+
+12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.
+
+13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
+equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.
+
+And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
+be can no matter without an existing _ego_, in some state of consciousness
+in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what,
+therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion,
+except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as
+we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that
+"breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living
+soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.
+All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a
+rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once
+defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
+"materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
+them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
+both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
+potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
+consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
+which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
+existence.
+
+The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
+that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
+with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
+force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
+God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
+dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
+crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
+resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
+syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
+infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
+successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
+act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
+conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
+world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
+that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
+demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
+admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
+admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
+which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
+laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
+remain as they are.
+
+Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
+disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the _Hagiographa_, or "sacred
+writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar
+that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially
+in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and
+inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit
+utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that
+whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle,
+as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the
+latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and
+achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this
+statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more
+important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found
+that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much
+neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key that
+unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging
+between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will
+most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no
+equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
+volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
+be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
+value as in the first chapter of Genesis.
+
+In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
+translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--
+
+1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
+and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
+only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
+Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent
+system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally
+consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence
+"without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying
+inconceivably vast areas in space.
+
+2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
+suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
+of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
+evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
+epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
+"gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
+matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
+universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
+man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
+order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
+and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.
+
+3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
+the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
+great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
+rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
+stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
+for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
+firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
+Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.
+
+4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
+fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
+life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
+distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
+nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
+turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
+was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
+"guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
+this most remarkable genesis.
+
+5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
+which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
+explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
+either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
+and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
+law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
+in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
+would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
+Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
+ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."
+
+6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
+theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
+excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
+earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
+necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
+the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
+occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
+mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
+organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
+hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
+(except man) "after his kind."
+
+But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
+of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
+that of materialistic science:--
+
+THE BIBLE GENESIS.
+
+1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
+Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
+no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
+
+2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as _perfect_ of its
+kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs,"
+declared to be in themselves upon the earth.
+
+3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
+every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
+plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
+field "before it grew."
+
+4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
+bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
+therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
+firmament of heaven.
+
+5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
+every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
+which they appear in geological distribution.
+
+6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
+he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
+every other living creature.
+
+7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
+life," and he became a "living soul,"
+
+8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
+man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
+the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
+face of the earth.
+
+9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
+man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.
+
+10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
+the angels."
+
+
+THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.
+
+1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
+universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
+myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
+through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
+infinite duration of time to come.
+
+2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less
+_imperfect_ of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some
+underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual
+development from lower into higher organisms.
+
+3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
+agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
+its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
+at best, only a sort of _tertium quid_ between matter and motion.
+
+4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
+birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
+progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
+constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
+of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
+gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.
+
+5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
+creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
+constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
+organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
+genera, or species.
+
+6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
+respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
+up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
+until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.
+
+7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
+thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known
+moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the
+social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree
+only, not in kind.
+
+8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
+purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
+adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
+all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
+indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
+tiger, or they dominion over him.
+
+9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
+expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
+God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
+end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
+become endowed.
+
+10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
+than the apes!
+
+And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
+Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
+conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
+devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
+least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.
+
+But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
+as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
+represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
+implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
+_ZRA_, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis,
+from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica
+Sacra," first published in 1662:--"_Sparsit, asparsit, cum aspersione
+fudit, diffudit_," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally
+diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew
+word _ZRA_. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or
+tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which
+"seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.
+
+The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
+is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the
+"_diversa diversorum viventium primordia_" of Dr. William Harvey, were
+originally implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and
+biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught
+the doctrine expressed in his phrase "_omne vivum ex ovo_," but that of
+"primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
+in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
+more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
+receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
+into a living organism.
+
+The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
+vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
+from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
+unit--or whether it originates _de novo_, as the materialists assert, from
+infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
+particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
+hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
+certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
+basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
+indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
+be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
+hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
+necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
+effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
+conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
+trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
+rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
+materialistic dogma, _nihil ex nihilo_, would necessitate a like induction
+wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is
+manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
+seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
+the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.
+
+The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
+thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
+environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
+environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
+ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
+point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
+back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
+form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
+such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
+the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
+themselves.
+
+At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
+but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
+forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
+or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
+itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
+the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
+conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
+"primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
+whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
+everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
+new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
+wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
+point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
+knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
+theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
+a tiger in an Indian jungle.
+
+Teach us to know what nature _does_, not what she _is_; and whatever of
+"divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic
+"Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the
+"myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul
+of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors
+themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their
+inspiration.
+
+We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
+contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
+and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
+because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
+all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
+Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
+machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
+at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
+by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
+will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
+the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
+assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
+speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
+molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
+ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
+to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
+proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
+advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
+connection.
+
+The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
+growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
+seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
+forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
+domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
+never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
+our position, that the Bible Genesis contains _the true key to the mystery
+of life_. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be
+reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes
+of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as
+Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial
+bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more
+perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and
+the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the
+more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[3] The emphatic
+statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the
+earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below
+"specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement
+that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions
+favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the
+life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.
+
+And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
+thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
+there is functional activity; while a state, or _status_, is an incidence
+determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and
+its _status_--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first
+instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity
+dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply
+the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is
+begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very
+important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What
+this efficient cause _is_, is a question that awakens no responsive
+inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of
+consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it
+is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will
+ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them
+the first quantitive essence of life itself.
+
+We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
+life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
+their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
+founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
+the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
+_animus_ of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great
+central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual,
+eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all
+religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the
+Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India.
+Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective
+blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely assailed and
+overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing
+and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the
+great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the
+slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration
+at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the
+dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room
+for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as
+"the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval
+mist," originally pervading the interplanetary spaces.
+
+We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
+Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
+experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
+purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
+the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
+after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
+investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
+against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
+whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
+"life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
+necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
+are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
+facts only, and the latter entirely on _pre_conceived and _pre_judicial
+notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
+objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
+the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
+themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
+potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
+must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
+theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
+God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
+heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
+of the universe:--
+
+  "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
+  Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
+
+The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
+science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
+household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
+more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
+dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
+for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
+represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
+the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
+industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
+number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
+gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
+controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
+statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
+scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
+has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
+achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
+
+Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
+science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
+this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
+materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
+why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
+of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
+slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
+more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
+Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
+to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
+refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
+man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
+
+When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
+much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
+Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
+between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
+and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
+primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
+whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
+arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
+shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
+thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
+maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
+span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
+no daring mortal could ever pass.
+
+Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
+necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
+construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
+"Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
+as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
+would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
+continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
+the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
+manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
+advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
+of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
+organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
+foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
+either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
+this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
+variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
+substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
+differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
+re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
+exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
+potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
+abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
+and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
+
+The bridge will never be built.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Life--Its True Genesis.
+
+
+
+The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
+the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
+that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
+celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
+admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
+observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
+that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
+the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
+principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
+force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
+governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
+rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
+instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
+the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
+comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
+upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
+"correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
+demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
+way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.
+
+In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
+fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
+the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
+streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
+along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
+wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
+life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
+flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
+spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[4] For like all living
+principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its
+primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows
+onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no
+postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered
+correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one
+grand comprehensive _Datum_ on which all the objective, as well as
+subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved
+upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the
+"evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that
+"upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of
+Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving
+raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream,
+and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.
+
+To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
+up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
+because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
+artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
+handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
+Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
+no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
+undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
+complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
+affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
+spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
+which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
+slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
+travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
+called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
+purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
+Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
+physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
+"Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
+action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
+that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
+as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
+were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
+field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
+opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."
+
+Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
+recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
+the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
+doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
+genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
+renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
+statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
+comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
+the command "to bring forth" was issued:--
+
+1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.
+
+2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, _the
+fowl of the air_.
+
+3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
+and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.
+
+4. _Let us make man in our own image_.
+
+And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
+with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
+Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
+This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
+paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
+crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
+the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
+post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
+life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
+the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
+writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
+origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
+geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
+written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
+Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the _Cosmos_ to escape him,
+would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
+was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
+and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.
+
+But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
+creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
+observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
+appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
+primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
+vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
+of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
+inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
+primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
+inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
+inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
+answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
+decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
+process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
+primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
+declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
+successfully entered upon by the Abbé Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and
+others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
+co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
+established by inductive methods.
+
+_Nihil ex nihilo_ is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as _omne
+vivum ex vivo._ That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least
+considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some
+vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
+manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
+and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
+greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
+two of a physiological or vital unit? [5] At all events, it is as
+impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other.
+And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible
+Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly
+without verification or proof.
+
+But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
+the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
+of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
+there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
+vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
+way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
+Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
+vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
+command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
+what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
+Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
+before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
+did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
+conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
+years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
+genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
+metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
+which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
+contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
+should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
+other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
+of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
+science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
+credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
+disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
+interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
+the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
+is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
+conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
+it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
+disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
+distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
+disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
+supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
+formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
+incredibility.
+
+It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
+inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
+we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
+interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
+translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
+--contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
+"mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand _questio
+vexata_ of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of
+all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (_i.e._
+each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
+physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
+formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
+hitherto occurring upon our globe.
+
+Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
+Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
+experiments of the renowned Abbé Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic
+assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by
+whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "_molecules
+organiques,_" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the
+_primordia viventium_ of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery"
+and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and
+Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever
+spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they
+all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible
+Genesis, _and all are explained by them._ We say _all_, with one exception
+only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this
+exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy
+vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He
+who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only
+a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And,
+breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, _he became a living soul_!
+
+Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
+without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
+chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
+Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
+yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
+defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
+so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
+awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
+primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
+myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
+the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
+Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because _you_ cannot
+annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
+compass of _your_ brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
+intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at _His_ sovereign and
+commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold
+of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit,
+and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words
+without knowledge."
+
+But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
+It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
+God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
+abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."
+
+What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
+power of God which operates (continuously operates) _to impart life to
+inanimate nature._[6] From the connection in which it here stands it means
+this, as in other connections it means the power which operates
+(continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like)
+in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving
+principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary,
+there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative
+now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor
+Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate
+nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its
+operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
+connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
+aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
+animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of
+mind.[7] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature,
+and a part not nature.
+
+Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the _ZRA_.
+the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
+thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
+own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
+commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
+forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
+first received its _baptism of life_ from God--in other words, derived the
+animating principle of life from the source of all Life.
+
+And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
+Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
+give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the
+vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused
+to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a
+definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most
+remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic
+idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor
+any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both
+vegetal and animal life.
+
+St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturæ non quseritur
+miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
+Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
+that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
+for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediæval authority.
+What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just
+such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth,"
+however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
+our modern scientists.
+
+And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
+definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
+vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
+allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
+living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
+hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
+uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
+to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
+not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
+own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral _plexus_, and
+Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
+and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
+_a priori_ induction will ever extend this line _or plexus_ to man. The
+developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
+will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
+up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
+his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
+downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
+archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
+and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
+nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
+Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
+and woof of their scientific formulæ respecting life, will never stand
+before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
+thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
+against them.
+
+Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
+life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
+whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
+his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
+this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
+_genetrix omnium viventium_, or the living _mother_ on whose bosom he
+shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
+beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
+not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
+principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
+forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
+forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
+apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
+and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
+grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
+_gramma_ coveted by his favorite game.
+
+And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
+against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
+to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
+which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
+behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
+will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
+the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
+infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
+But how about the preëxisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
+megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
+period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
+did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
+and we will answer it.
+
+But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
+all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
+matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
+modifications, combinations, etc.,[9] chemically as well as molecularly
+considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a
+mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the
+argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some
+one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.
+
+For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
+etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
+statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
+well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
+some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
+plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
+materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
+conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
+as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
+must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
+some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
+number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
+molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
+possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
+infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
+cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
+occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
+follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
+or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
+Intelligence" of the universe.
+
+Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
+era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
+their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
+more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
+for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
+concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
+possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
+essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
+All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
+an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
+were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
+theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
+or the first fungus-spore. [10]
+
+All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
+both plants and animals have _disappeared_ from the earth for the want of
+the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished.
+What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that they
+originally _appeared_ from the presence of these identical conditions,
+whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have occurred? We put
+this question not simply because the Bible Genesis asserts that "_out of
+the ground_ made the Lord God to grow" every plant of the field "before it
+was in the earth," as well as every herb of the field "before it grew;"
+nor because it declares that their primordial germs are in the earth; nor
+because it speaks of the earth as containing within itself the "animating
+principle of life." But we put it on the irrefragable logic of the
+materialist's own premises and conclusions. They may use other and
+different physiological terms from what we should care to employ, but
+their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force," their "highly
+differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing more than what
+we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital conditions," etc. Their
+preference for the terms they employ, over essential "qualities" or
+"properties" of matter, is entirely due to the obvious invalidity of their
+conclusions, except as their physical theory of life may help them out of
+an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more convenient term on which to
+allege the _de novo_ origin of life--its spontaneous manifestation in
+their experimental flasks--than any vital principle primarily inhering in
+matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to
+validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious
+force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In
+other words, theirs is the fallacy of _non causa pro causa,_ or that
+vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause
+of vital manifestation, and fastens induction where none is legitimately
+inferable.
+
+Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
+that in all life-manifestations there must be some preëxisting vital force
+or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can
+come into existence.[11] M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that
+organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to
+physical or chemical forces." The Abbé Needham is satisfied to formulate a
+"force végetative," so far as plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably
+falls back on vital force or energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique,"
+which is essentially inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations.
+According to the latter, the whole universe is an "_organisme absolu_"
+constantly endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all
+conceivable directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
+interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
+theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
+is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
+distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
+For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
+from all vital manifestation.
+
+An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
+of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
+transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
+and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
+conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
+solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
+among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
+of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [12] which
+merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover,
+day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But
+this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's
+speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution
+theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his
+"archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature
+adheres to perfected forms.
+
+Goethe accepts the doctrine of _vis centripeta_, beyond the influence of
+which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or
+variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
+variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
+inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
+not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned _by_ circumstances
+_to_ circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to
+the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he
+frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We
+should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after the Great
+Architect's pattern, _to_ circumstances, and is only varied _by_
+circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of variability. For
+the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal pattern, after
+which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals has been
+fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose mind, or
+rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
+archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this
+_Archeus_ pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from
+the mind of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but
+from the one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all
+living things were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that
+world "which," according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that
+is contained sensibly in our world."
+
+This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
+influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
+modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
+types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
+way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
+nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
+then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
+attribute to nature a _purpose_ to modify persistent forms under a law
+that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
+archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
+intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
+type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
+therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
+or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
+predetermining will or agency in the universe.
+
+Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
+thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
+character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
+before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
+effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
+would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
+itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
+materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
+one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
+reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
+and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
+entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
+ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
+co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
+personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
+obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
+not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
+spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
+fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
+ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
+angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
+worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
+ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
+other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
+machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
+language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
+and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
+majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
+iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
+Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
+two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
+should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
+inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
+screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
+greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.
+
+But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
+science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
+the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
+or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
+words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
+manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Alternations of Forest Growths.
+
+
+
+No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
+alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
+apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
+wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
+been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
+their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
+ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
+satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
+phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
+these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
+scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
+ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
+And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
+of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
+only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
+these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
+lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
+noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
+Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
+question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
+any very important new facts given.
+
+If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
+think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
+collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
+ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
+ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
+implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
+silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
+remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
+themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
+that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
+of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
+further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
+the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
+waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
+with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
+11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
+specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
+this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
+by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
+but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
+and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
+determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
+genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.
+
+Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
+treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
+to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
+species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
+the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
+over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
+centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
+belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
+again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
+have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
+causes; but, in many instances, _this explanation is not probable_." It is
+manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this connection,
+in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed" any other
+germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits that, in many
+instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the dissemination of
+seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the exploded notion that
+vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous instances where seeds
+have grown after lying dormant for ages in the earth." He further says, in
+the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while
+they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he
+is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain
+for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that
+they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether.
+But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of
+ancient Egyptian cereals, which are sometimes hawked about the country for
+two and three dollars a seed, and, in the same breath, accept the absurder
+theory that seeds may lie dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and
+most enduring woods will utterly perish and disappear in a few brief
+years, is wholly inexplicable to us, except as an hypothesis to force a
+conclusion, or to account for the otherwise unaccountable alternations of
+forest growths.
+
+But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
+seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
+entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would
+be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and
+other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr.
+Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by
+actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and
+thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils
+below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach
+them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may
+answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a
+nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the
+indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a
+like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly
+be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light
+of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are
+speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed
+that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such
+exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast
+into the fire and consumed to ashes.
+
+But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
+the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
+brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
+entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
+in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
+remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
+calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
+and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
+rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
+burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
+found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
+Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
+waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
+which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
+Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
+Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
+depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
+must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
+brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
+wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
+did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
+species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
+us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
+microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
+any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
+examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
+large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
+But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
+the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
+seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
+this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
+newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
+is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
+sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.
+
+It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
+hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
+neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
+oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
+entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
+the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
+while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
+"germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
+growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
+in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
+natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
+the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
+natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
+"vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
+"the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
+has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
+instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
+implicitly followed since.
+
+In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
+York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
+Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
+growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
+ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
+the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
+trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
+poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
+spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
+tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
+fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
+replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
+supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
+not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
+altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
+tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
+and growth.
+
+The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
+communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
+fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
+1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
+oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
+propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
+too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
+special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
+immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
+natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."
+
+In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
+storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
+was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
+that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
+"had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
+prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
+neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
+nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
+promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
+unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
+season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.
+
+In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
+the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
+before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
+alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and
+through forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was
+possible that their seeds could have been derived. One of these
+tornadoes the writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South
+Alabama, and he is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that
+the instances are rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean
+path of a tornado, through any of our primitive forests, has been
+succeeded by the same growth of timber as that borne down by the winds.
+Where the path of this ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine
+forest, a clean growth of oak was buttressed on either side by pine;
+and _vice versa_, where it swept an oak forest. And it is certain that
+the tornado, whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such
+discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine
+growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific
+theory or balk an unscientific one.
+
+Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
+years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
+was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
+been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
+had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
+taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
+deciduous, and _vice versa._ We have any number of well authenticated
+facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
+place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.
+
+Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
+which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
+swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
+without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (_Larix Americana_) may
+be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by
+the balsam fir (_Abies balsamea_), which may be probably caused by the
+partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree
+that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a
+period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
+extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
+state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
+manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
+soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
+accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
+for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
+that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
+considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
+granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
+in the interest of speculative parties.
+
+But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
+found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
+country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
+swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
+artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
+appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
+latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
+the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
+for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
+in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
+growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
+the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
+growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
+favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
+swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
+nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
+the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
+all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
+Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
+all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
+the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
+of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
+Bible genesis nowhere affirms.
+
+Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
+Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
+dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
+the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
+evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
+growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
+"seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
+stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
+the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
+genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
+locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
+his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
+conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.
+
+He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
+practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
+philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
+rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
+fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
+adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
+by an oak forest, _where there were a few oaks previously scattered
+through the woods to furnish seed._" This is a very cautious, as well as
+circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had
+his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor
+Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through
+the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into
+account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one.
+They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a
+proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His
+anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a
+pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify
+him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement
+as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of
+Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have
+found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the
+intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the
+localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have
+been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the
+shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No
+squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get hickory nuts, and
+few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and thinner-shelled walnuts
+are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is provident, but no more so
+than he is fastidious in the choice of his food. He never plants acorns
+except for his own gratification, and is never gratified with indifferent
+food so long as he can command that which is to his liking.
+
+In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
+necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
+inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
+indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
+fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
+correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded _by a
+spontaneous growth of trees of another kind._" In the sense in which he
+manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
+might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
+that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
+seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the _Acer_ family
+excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
+a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
+chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
+A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
+accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
+tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
+nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
+generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
+we advance in this work.
+
+Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
+unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
+operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
+adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
+in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
+called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
+almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
+Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
+is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
+spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
+mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
+following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
+places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
+etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
+expressed at the asking of the question."
+
+These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
+Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
+for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
+conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
+They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
+the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
+"spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
+with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
+meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
+conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
+trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
+lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
+facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
+presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
+to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
+distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
+native forest from which seed could have been derived.
+
+Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
+town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
+had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
+"yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, _where there was not a
+single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the
+place_." Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white
+pine, of which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory."
+He is greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
+readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
+by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
+Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
+them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
+caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
+might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
+grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
+provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
+locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
+have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
+and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
+Bible genesis.
+
+While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
+imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
+cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
+within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
+vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
+any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
+at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
+and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
+germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
+that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
+nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
+inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
+years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
+so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
+hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
+old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
+stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
+were laid.
+
+Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
+few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
+well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
+which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
+vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
+on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago
+(_circiter_ 1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding
+region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my
+grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It
+contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As
+the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this
+ground there sprang up a grove of white pines, covering the field and
+retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a
+single oak or chestnut tree;" and he adds, "_there was not a single pine
+whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to
+have been planted on this spot_." He supposes, however, that the "seeds"
+(pine cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought
+them up "within the limits of vegetation."
+
+As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
+that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
+and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
+forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
+covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
+Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
+the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
+idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
+with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
+time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
+fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
+oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
+many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
+the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
+succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
+hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
+that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
+intervals among the larger deciduous trees.
+
+Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
+that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
+gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
+once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
+where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
+which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
+of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
+different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps,
+_vice versa_. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a
+brief summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of
+the country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less
+well-informed on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says
+that in the region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871,
+"dense growths of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing
+rapidly;" but he omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to
+state the previous growths of timber, or whether there were any
+neighboring growths of poplar along the track of the burnt district from
+which seed might have been derived.
+
+Here are some of his more important statements:--
+
+"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
+up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."
+
+"At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
+deciduous trees, and _vice versa_."
+
+"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
+oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."
+
+"In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."
+
+"In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
+maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
+more of the last named than any other."
+
+This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
+simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
+that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
+"Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
+really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
+suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
+surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
+the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
+neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
+forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
+physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
+proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
+be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
+countries of Europe.
+
+It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
+New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
+the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
+pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
+without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
+absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
+soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
+ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
+and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
+the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
+often see a hazel coppice; after a time the cratægus, and finally the
+oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
+aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
+the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
+of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.
+
+He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
+timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
+from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
+Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
+wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
+immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
+noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
+very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
+pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
+produce nothing but poplars, _where none of that species of tree was
+previously to be found"_. But facts of a similar character are too
+numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
+authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
+germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
+appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
+them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
+passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
+circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
+plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
+occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
+physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.
+
+There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
+a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
+forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
+areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
+yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
+the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
+ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
+after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
+been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
+whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
+tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
+forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
+indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
+specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
+genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
+others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
+theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
+growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
+confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
+scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
+pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
+effectually turned on the sneerer.
+
+Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
+singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
+appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
+which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
+this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
+disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
+value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
+were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
+earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
+And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
+conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
+were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
+units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
+circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
+all candid and impartial readers will agree.
+
+Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
+theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
+that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
+meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
+position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
+to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
+little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
+will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
+had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
+hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
+vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
+is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
+only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed,
+_but twelve species of plants _ (not including grasses and sedges)
+flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."
+
+The attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
+meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
+by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
+in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
+their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
+fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
+soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
+of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
+their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
+changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
+England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
+the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
+open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
+aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
+for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
+seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
+beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
+for their more successful growth.
+
+No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
+centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
+obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
+bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
+obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
+she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
+eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
+guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But
+forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up
+in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages,
+or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the
+butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
+dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
+all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
+mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
+to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
+mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
+her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
+command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
+expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
+implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
+seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
+them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
+that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
+language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--
+
+      "Nature never lends
+  The smallest scruple of her excellence,
+  But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
+  Herself the glory of a creditor--
+  _Both thanks and use_."
+
+Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
+of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
+never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
+glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
+seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
+bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
+and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
+legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
+breast, and her "copy is eterne."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+
+
+
+Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
+of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
+place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
+unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
+trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
+insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
+plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
+explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
+small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
+which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
+provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
+these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
+in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
+coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
+may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
+plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
+until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
+scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
+to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
+have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
+when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
+vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
+conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
+fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
+
+This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we
+have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific
+path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on
+vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our
+cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the
+"ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in
+which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all
+their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are
+the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of
+storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of
+storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed
+back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it
+may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself.
+For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much
+more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned
+to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it
+quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from
+the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed
+mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.
+
+The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
+nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
+thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
+the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
+belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
+former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
+to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
+least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
+their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
+these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
+after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
+fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
+circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
+had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
+merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
+when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
+no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
+exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
+protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
+whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
+chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
+Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
+
+Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
+Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
+remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
+admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
+on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
+he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
+implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
+wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
+"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
+says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
+which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
+the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
+or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
+for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
+exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
+with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
+show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
+dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
+erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
+may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
+than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
+dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
+this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
+erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
+household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
+they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they _do_
+follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
+
+The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
+"Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
+indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
+extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
+after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
+Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
+together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
+at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
+lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
+connected with the case was, that _the raspberry seeds were recovered from
+the stomach_ (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society,
+where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
+circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
+provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
+the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
+conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
+would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
+
+But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
+comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
+years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
+raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
+Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
+kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
+were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
+one." This statement must be received _cum grano_. The Romans never used
+coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a
+battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
+was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
+taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
+might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
+soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
+very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
+particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
+the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
+posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
+for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
+that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
+recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
+the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
+well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
+in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
+
+All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
+about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
+record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
+stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
+seeds, as well as the _obolus_ in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be
+found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had
+withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the
+surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have
+obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for
+belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
+
+From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
+mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
+England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
+of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
+not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
+case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
+distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
+discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
+tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
+soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
+"Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
+there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
+buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
+other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
+wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
+wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
+trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
+or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
+bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
+of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
+seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
+of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
+
+Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
+alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
+fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
+circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
+the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is _Erechthites
+hieracifolia_, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its
+seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is
+not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds,
+and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
+survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
+burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
+any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
+heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
+of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
+no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
+their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
+seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
+those _grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
+southern hemisphere_, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in
+which they so promptly make their appearance.
+
+Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
+deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
+heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
+growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
+the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
+two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
+from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
+to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
+only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
+a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
+must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
+its place.
+
+The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
+nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of
+the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil
+where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but
+from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those
+taking advantage of environing conditions, just as _Bacteria_ or
+_Torultz_ spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots
+of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring
+directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living
+organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable
+depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the
+burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when
+there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from
+the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken
+their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural
+"gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account
+for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick
+bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in
+this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when
+white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds
+of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing
+in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any
+length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that
+when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are
+effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie
+grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and
+the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No
+seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found
+had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most
+powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make
+their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation
+did on the earth, not from seed, but from preëxisting vital units or
+primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
+necessary conditions for their development and growth.
+
+The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
+explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
+to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
+no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
+generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
+seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
+impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
+seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
+thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
+eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
+gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
+the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
+gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
+utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
+corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
+involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
+power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
+seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
+natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
+macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
+gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
+pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
+gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
+outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
+passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
+pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
+appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
+observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
+slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
+the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
+
+The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
+they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
+hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
+the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
+small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
+and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
+some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
+otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
+even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
+bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
+length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
+have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
+character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
+mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
+comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
+have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
+crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
+crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
+fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
+bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
+
+These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
+Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
+chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
+than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
+digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
+"natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
+"the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
+loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
+of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
+relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
+without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
+transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
+number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
+of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
+as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
+
+Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
+other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
+have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
+mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
+dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
+this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
+agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
+well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
+given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
+or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
+seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
+late civil war, a little leguminous plant (_Lespedeza striata_) sprang
+up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it
+came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of
+the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage
+plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this
+plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the
+phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities
+in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general
+appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not
+particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one
+southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they
+naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in
+those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not
+abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had
+the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive
+legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
+
+It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
+suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
+as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
+been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
+southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
+prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
+to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
+and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
+South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
+it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
+thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
+war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
+vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
+in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
+South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
+Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
+states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
+winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
+quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
+wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
+plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
+favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
+organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
+their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
+on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
+examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
+the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
+life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
+have named.
+
+This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
+"conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
+soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates,"
+"_molecules organiques_," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
+life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
+theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
+developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
+dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
+conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
+of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
+only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
+"molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
+from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
+two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
+with matter--_molar_ motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass,
+and _molecular_ motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its
+unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
+
+But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
+collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
+mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
+accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
+other words, it is simply a _process_ or _mode_ of action, and stands in
+about the same relation to matter as _growth_ does to a living plant or
+tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
+subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
+indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
+additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
+"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
+it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
+it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
+motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
+both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
+less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
+having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
+moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
+matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
+co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
+physical hypothesis of life.
+
+But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
+local fern (_Schizoea pusilla_) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
+affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
+of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
+at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
+ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
+ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
+Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
+south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
+north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
+appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
+thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
+the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
+half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
+will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
+of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
+known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
+not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
+hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
+vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
+high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
+another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
+respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
+the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
+mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
+governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
+manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
+globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
+appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for _Bacteria_ in
+the blood, _Torulæ_ in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological
+cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable
+"unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant
+forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of
+centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of
+affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis,
+because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but
+let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational
+life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force,"
+or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable
+to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they
+absurdly use these terms.
+
+It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
+question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
+seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
+theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
+east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
+respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
+this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
+the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
+changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
+theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
+directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
+plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
+"war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
+relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
+and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
+causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
+mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
+habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
+reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
+vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
+common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
+must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
+compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
+conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
+shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
+vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
+been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
+climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
+localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
+growth of local vegetations.
+
+And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
+seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
+regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
+these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
+vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
+units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
+determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
+resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
+seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
+as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
+given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
+not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
+chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
+likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
+any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
+of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
+soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
+judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
+failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
+experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
+subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
+less useful to man.
+
+But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
+As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
+nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
+out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
+of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
+no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
+life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
+inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
+fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
+they _might_ produce life _de novo_.[13] But the most daring physicist
+would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his
+knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to
+"molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon
+such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.
+
+It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
+in the appearance and geographical distribution of _fungi_, as universally
+obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it
+may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between
+certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive
+manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in
+assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
+fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
+classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
+as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
+other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
+necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
+essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
+Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
+obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
+form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
+make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
+them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
+about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
+necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
+development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
+burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
+to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
+commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
+part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
+
+Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
+moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
+which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
+found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
+certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
+of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
+their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
+from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
+nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
+from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
+grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
+disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
+and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
+disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
+mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
+develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
+To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
+different species of _Mucor_, for instance--for disgusting offal over
+decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
+degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
+creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
+
+We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
+testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
+etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
+of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
+spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
+go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
+apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
+depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
+beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
+select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
+the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
+direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
+conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
+environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
+atmosphere--the "_pater omnipotens Æther_" of Virgil, "descending into the
+bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great
+himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things
+of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that
+myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a
+cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the
+poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father Æther," and the earth as
+his "joyous spouse." But life, with its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and
+swift," has reached its highest conceptions in the mind of the poet, not
+in the speculations of the scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from
+many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a
+Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass,
+staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a
+Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of
+"molecular machinery" by the scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its
+manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe
+of all-potential matter and motion!
+
+Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
+spores of the large puff-ball (_Lycoperdon giganteum_), as well as those
+of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose methods
+of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced artificially. But
+the process by which their production is thus effected, is more properly a
+natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says
+(quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and
+fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse
+of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue
+productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they
+cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these cases, but the
+conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded by the branches
+of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became favorable for the
+development of truffle "germs," and they made their appearance just as
+mushrooms do in caves and other places, where artificial beds are made and
+chemically balanced for their development and growth. And the reason why
+they disappeared, after a period of ten or fifteen years, was simply
+because the proper nutriment of the soil was exhausted, and not in
+consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the growing trees. One
+uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of this much-coveted
+fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions obtain, they
+_appear_, and wherever these conditions fail, they _disappear_,
+notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
+soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
+truffle (_Tuber æstivum_) appears under beech trees, another form (_Tuber
+macrosporum_) under oak trees, and still a third form (_Tuber brumale_)
+under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change in soil
+conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among oaks,
+produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
+amounting to a specific difference in variety.
+
+The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
+one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
+horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
+cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
+over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
+time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
+ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
+governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
+whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
+In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
+come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
+its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
+the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
+as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
+Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
+in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
+seen by the required telescope.
+
+Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
+says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
+dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
+plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
+early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
+summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
+the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
+to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
+of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
+were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
+era. These primordial germs, or the _ZRA_ of the Bible genesis, must have
+preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
+spore-bearing cryptogam.
+
+M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
+great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
+at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
+oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
+conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
+oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
+All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
+connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
+the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
+all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
+development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
+fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
+connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
+case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
+remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
+micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
+parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
+from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
+parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
+occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
+than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
+springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
+spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
+endowed from the beginning.
+
+But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
+seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
+could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
+produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
+distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
+stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the _first_
+fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
+divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
+mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
+we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
+comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
+depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
+of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
+condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, _Nature_, as we
+half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
+solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
+ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
+radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
+baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
+idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
+choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
+field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
+her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
+breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
+proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
+life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
+soul-endowed man.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+
+
+
+Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S.
+etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of
+Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856,
+on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding
+Food," are the following:--
+
+1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its
+absolute creation, of which we know nothing.
+
+2. "But we assume each species to have been _created but once in time and
+in place_, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own law of
+reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws
+external to it.[14]
+
+3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate,
+since _any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but always
+fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc_.,
+
+4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates
+distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the
+heating rays."
+
+There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average
+rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in
+the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the
+hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several
+localities in which the different species of vegetation make their
+appearance.
+
+But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific
+creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount
+value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and
+restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from
+the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs.
+"Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or
+restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to
+doubt that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now,
+in nature.
+
+The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created
+at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds,
+is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or
+scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an
+experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first
+bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste
+over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants
+peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance,
+not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have
+nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because
+a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from
+the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we
+have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man,
+artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of
+plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did
+millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of
+these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or
+circumstances.
+
+But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of
+progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified
+offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original
+ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical
+faith, but never of experimental proof. "_Entia non sunt multiplicanda
+præter necessitatem_" is an old and well-approved maxim, applicable alike
+to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the innumerable
+crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is produced
+without the necessary conditions on which its production depends.
+"Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest
+meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course
+of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and
+animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements.
+As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of
+development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without
+which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological
+sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and
+inevitably produced.[15] And this law is just as dependent on necessary
+vital conditions as vital manifestations are dependent on a physiological
+law. There must always be this reciprocal dependence and relationship
+between conditioning causes and effects. Whenever and wherever the
+necessary vital conditions exist, the physiological law takes effect, and
+the requisite vital manifestation is witnessed. And this is no doubt as
+true of animal as of vegetable life.
+
+The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of
+which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora.
+Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;
+
+  1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from  0° to 15°.
+  2. " Tropical       "      "         " 15° "  23°.
+  3. " Sub-tropical   "      "         " 23° "  34°.
+  4. " Warm Temperate "      "         " 34° "  45°.
+  5. " Cold           "      "         " 45° "  58°.
+  6. " Sub-arctic     "      "         " 58° "  66°.
+  7. " Arctic         "      "         " 66° "  72°.
+  8. " Polar          "      "         " 72° "  82°.
+
+These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with
+reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like
+division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems,
+extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our
+equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at
+their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they
+respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the
+next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we
+ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak
+of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the
+elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm
+temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all
+latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.
+
+They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant
+life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted
+for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances,
+modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the
+highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight
+exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that
+the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should
+hereafter be extended.
+
+Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation
+quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical
+mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate
+zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer
+classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are
+marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey
+gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant
+zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of
+plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind
+can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these
+statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the
+different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of
+vegetation peculiar to each of them.
+
+The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance
+in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein,
+and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could
+only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other
+conditions of that extensive zone.
+
+The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are
+characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while
+retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less
+rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are
+peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and
+most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do
+not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in
+both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain
+systems within the equatorial regions.
+
+The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and
+general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc.,
+exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a
+greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery
+and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels,
+and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these
+zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.
+
+The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of
+the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the
+other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and
+plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the
+corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of
+deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths,
+cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked
+characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent
+grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more
+extensively into varieties.
+
+The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm
+temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency
+is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are
+more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also
+abundant in grasses.
+
+The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social
+conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe
+and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is
+sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering
+herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.
+
+The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation
+generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.
+
+The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be
+entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most
+extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire
+vegetation.
+
+There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting
+plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the
+elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may
+appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.
+
+From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested
+on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before
+answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions _have_
+been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the
+distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on
+climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and
+isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one
+important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that
+of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but
+once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of
+its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences
+of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original
+plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and
+that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts
+of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones
+where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they
+attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than
+satisfactory.
+
+The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as
+reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray,
+in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work
+Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he
+was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not
+take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication,
+the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the
+individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."
+
+And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his
+associate's observations, in considering the very point here under
+consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his
+idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in
+individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in
+discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view
+is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with
+the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of
+accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or
+animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their
+appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and
+under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.
+
+Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions
+favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these
+conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its
+appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but
+simply the presence of "conditions"--the _pro_vision of man harmonizing
+with the _pre_vision of nature. In the same way the "Japan clover" made
+its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over the southern
+states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of plants, but
+the presence of natural conditions.[16]
+
+The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be
+arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general
+facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly
+to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and
+not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast
+intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others
+would require us to believe. Take the case of the _Schizoea pusilla_ of
+the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing in
+similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their
+antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this
+plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long
+time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that
+it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to
+New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these
+"specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would
+have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both
+localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored;
+and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the
+fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formulæ,
+must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite
+child of nature" that she condescended to create it _twice_ "in time and
+place," instead of only _once_. It is a poor rule, they may say, that has
+no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.
+
+Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief
+in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more
+rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high
+authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine
+currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have
+played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even
+across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the
+appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of
+miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than
+the presence of _Bacteria_ or _Torulæ_[17] in different organic
+infusions? If the vital units of these _infusoriæ_, are present in
+experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually admits, why may not
+the vital germs or units of this _Schizoea pusilla_ have made their
+appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand and New Jersey, at
+the same or different periods of time? If Professor Gray regards the
+microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical forms in
+inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of nature,
+then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove that
+these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which she
+has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the
+question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of
+argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly
+operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation
+not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and
+hence not supernatural.
+
+But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are
+led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the
+sub-arctic zone, and _vice-versa,_ and even beyond the equator to the
+sub-antarctic zone, and still _vice versa_. Before proceeding to consider
+the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called glacial
+periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or considering
+the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state their position
+in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and concisely as we know
+how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the generally accepted one
+of the evolutionists, as well as most of the present scientific world. As
+the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet theory of evolution depended
+on the satisfactory solution of this vexed problem, it became necessary
+for him to give his best and entire mental energies to the gigantic task
+which was, by universal consent, assigned him. The reader shall see how
+admirably the thermal equator is crossed by Mr. Darwin, with his vast
+swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and other plants, forest trees,
+anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild animals, such as would
+gladden the heart of the "great American showman" beyond the most
+extravagant comparison.
+
+The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve,
+was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and
+cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the
+corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was
+any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of
+how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will
+give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be
+charged with misrepresentation.
+
+He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and
+more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions;
+and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of
+the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the
+equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot
+lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and
+sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this
+period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres
+gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living
+on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former
+homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms
+returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms
+would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if
+sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms
+on the mountains of Europe.
+
+"In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its
+turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere
+rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the
+equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the
+mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These
+latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes,
+leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with
+them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their
+mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the
+same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of
+the intermediate tropical regions."
+
+We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for
+plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us
+in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure,
+even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.
+
+But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the
+strength of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr.
+Darwin must rest:--
+
+1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial
+epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however
+few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the
+maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.
+
+2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the
+sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a
+constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface,
+being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion
+or perihelion.
+
+3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the
+earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any
+glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not
+altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time,
+and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to
+the other.
+
+4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends
+continuously and permanently much farther north than 80° or 81°. Mt.
+Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only a
+few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was
+traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some
+ten or twelve degrees further north. [18]
+
+5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75°,
+what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the
+north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope,
+below 60°, a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The utmost
+limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time,"
+conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to
+55°, or about the northern boundary of England.
+
+Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes
+of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further
+south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the
+sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking
+of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an
+ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that
+the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to
+the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a
+moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during
+the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this
+continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude.
+Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only
+push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm
+temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the
+Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of
+Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.
+
+Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less,
+when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the
+isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been
+the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape
+the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have
+flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the
+Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded
+through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation,
+that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our
+northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.
+
+For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern
+ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll
+has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms
+down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme
+northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have
+managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent
+habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent?
+Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it
+ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible
+of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only
+to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these
+forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern
+hemisphere.
+
+They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more
+before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that
+distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly
+in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been
+constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must
+accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period
+indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them.
+Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the
+line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more
+years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican
+states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled
+Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central
+American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a
+point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the
+northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the
+universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's
+calculations.
+
+To have accomplished this grand glaciatorial feat the North Pole must have
+donned some twenty times the amount of ice now about both poles of the
+earth, and so changed the earth's centre of gravity as to have inundated
+every foot of land on its habitable surface. But if this terrible
+catastrophy had been avoided, and some of our extreme northern forms had
+forced their way through the Isthmus into the lowlands of Columbia, they
+must have done so at their greatest possible peril, even if they had
+reached the base of Old Mt. Tolima in advance of the thermal equator, now
+fleeing in dismay before the southern Ice-monarch, with all his
+isochimenal hosts in mad pursuit of their invaders. And if these
+adventurous northern forms had succeeded in ascending Mt. Tolima, they
+could never have got down again, with the assistance of forty glaciations.
+
+But we can imagine Mr. Darwin promptly snatching his pen to show the
+stupidity of these northern forms in not climbing Popocatepetl or some
+other lofty mountain in Central America or Mexico, on their retreat before
+the still advancing thermal equator. But how this would have helped them
+to cross the geographical equator, we fail to see. When Mr. Darwin, and
+the eminent corps of geologists and physicists accepting his solution of
+this "vexed question," can make a "warm term" south _succeed_ a "cold
+term" north, we shall have no difficulty in solving the problem ourself.
+But, unfortunately, the two terms--the cold one north and the warm one
+south--are simultaneous in occurrence, and the same causes which forced
+these northern invaders into the tropics, when they followed _after_ the
+thermal equator, would have driven them ignominously back again _before_
+it. The climbing of mountains would only have prolonged their disaster.
+For after the glaciation north comes the glaciation south, and unless our
+cold temperate zone were pushed down beyond the geographical equator, none
+of its living forms could ever have reached the corresponding zone in the
+southern hemisphere.
+
+But as this "migration theory" is one of paramount importance to modern
+science, and especially to "Darwinism," [19] distinctively so called, let
+us, at the risk of repetition and tediousness, propose a scientific
+expedition for the better solution of this problem. To do this, we propose
+to cut loose from our stupid predecessors, the plants and animals, and
+invite Mr. Darwin and some of his more distinguished European
+contemporaries, not omitting Professors Gray, Winchell, Yeomans, and some
+few other American admirers of his, to accompany us on a fresh expedition
+from the warm and cold temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+south, _purely in the interest of science_. To make it certain that the
+time fixed upon for this "expedition" to start, will not escape their
+attention, we will state what many of them already well know, that the
+present eccentricity of the earth's orbit is very low, being only 0.0168,
+and that, in the year of our Lord 851,800, it will reach its next superior
+limit, with a few intervening oscillations of such minimum value as to
+render it hardly worth our while to start before that time.
+
+We shall be obliged, of course to invite our distinguished European party
+to join us on this side of the Atlantic, as their own narrow and
+contracted continent furnishes no proper field for determining the problem
+in question. We shall insist upon one condition only: "_That they shall
+never leave the warm temperate zone in which we shall set out on our
+expedition, except to pass halfway into an adjoining zone as is the habit,
+at times, with plants and animals_." This condition will have to be
+rigidly observed, otherwise our expedition would be of no scientific value
+to future generations. As we shall have plenty of time to provide the
+necessary outfit, we will appoint Mr. Darwin purveyor-general of the
+party, and hold him responsible for any misadventure.
+
+We will arrange for the expedition to start in the early autumn of the
+year of our Lord 831,800, or about twenty thousand years before the earth
+shall reach its next superior limit of eccentricity,--all of us eager, of
+course, to brave the climatic vicissitudes of the journey, and to solve
+the "great problem of the ages," which is, to determine how the gigantic
+elephantoids of the Eocene period managed to cross the thermal equator,
+and pass into the present arctic regions of our globe.
+
+As "the king never dies," so the old southern Ice-monarch will be
+succeeded by the young northern one, at about the period named. We shall
+then have a decided advantage over our predecessors, the plants and
+animals, in their journey southward, since we shall know the exact route
+they took, and need only follow it. Presumably they had no such
+information, nor had they either chart or compass to guide them,--a
+circumstance which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently taken into account in
+predicating intelligence of his favorite pedestrians. Besides, these
+vegetal and animal forms had one difficulty to encounter which we shall
+not experience. With all the northern forms driven down into the Central
+American states, they must have been sadly crowded for room, especially
+near the Isthmus. The social conifers must have monopolized all the more
+favored sites on the mountain sides and tops, while the humbler denizens
+of the forest must have contented themselves with still more limited
+quarters. The more impatient animals, for lack of necessary forage, must
+have crowded through the Isthmus only to be driven back by the tropical
+heats to their proper isotherms.
+
+But our warm temperate zone is now moving southward, and our scientific
+expedition is moving with it. The northern Ice-monarch has resumed
+absolute sway, and our aphelion distance from the sun has increased some
+tens millions of miles. We have, in the mean time, moved down to the line
+of the Gulf states, and are deploying to the right in order to make a
+triumphant entry into Mexico. Mr. Darwin is daily consulting the
+isochimenals, and is confident that our northern ice-cap will equal Mr.
+Croll's highest expectations. The news finally reaches us that the Gulf
+stream has turned its course southward, and is now pouring its immense
+treasures of heat into the South Atlantic, if not turning the African
+"horn" and washing the far-off Australian coast. This fact greatly
+increases the enthusiasm of our European party, and they hasten forward
+into the sub-tropical zone, almost "violating conditions" in their haste
+to enter the tropics.
+
+At length, we crowd the narrow passages of the Isthmus, and the glory of a
+warm temperate climate bursts upon our view in the Columbian states, of
+South America. _The expedition promises to be an entire success_. At
+least, Mr. Darwin thinks so, and he is now the Sir Oracle of our party. We
+deliberately enter the lowlands of Columbia, and make ready to ascend the
+sub-tropical mountains--those formerly equatorial--where the "great
+scientific problem of the ages" is to be demonstrated. But we are
+measuring time by almost _Sirius_ distances, and vast geologic periods
+sweep by without apparent record. The northern ice-cap has been a
+prodigious one, crowding us nearly down to the geographical equator, with
+the advantage we have of appropriating some five and half degrees of the
+sub-tropical zone.
+
+But the year Anno Domini 851,800 finally rolls round, and the maximum of
+the earth's ice-cap is reached. Old Mt. Tolima looms up in the distance,
+and we soon ascertain that its height is sufficient for all scientific
+purposes. Its summit displays a glittering ice-cap, and we are certain to
+find the proper isotherm by climbing its umbrageous sides. We accordingly
+make haste to reach its base, and get there not a minute too soon; for the
+young southern Ice-monarch has stolen a march on the thermal equator, and
+is driving it irresistibly back to its old quarters. His march northward
+is a continuous triumph and ovation up to 55°, and the heart of Patagonia
+is made glad by his near approach. True, the white gates of commerce are
+closed about the Horn; but that is no concern of these wild Patagonians.
+The aggressive Britton is driven out of New Zealand, and that is another
+source of joy to the savage breast. Tasmania would extend a gladder
+welcome than all to the Ice-crowned monarch, but alas, not a drop of
+Tasmanian blood runs in human veins! Cape Good Hope has now a sub-arctic
+climate, and the heart of the wild Kaffir and Zulu rejoices that the
+sceptre of "perfidious Albion" is broken.
+
+The thermal equator at length reaches the base of Mt. Tolima, and hastens
+northward to the Isthmus, and thence to Hondurus and New Guatemala, where,
+by sheer force of exhaustion, it comes to a halt.
+
+But, as the equatorial zone extends fifteen degrees both ways from the
+thermal equator, its southern limit now rests on the geographical equator,
+and accordingly encircles the base of our "mount of refuge." We are now up
+this mountain some sixteen thousand feet above the equatorial lowlands,
+with the sub-tropical, tropical, and equatorial zones between us and the
+possibility of our further migration southward, without violating the
+express conditions imposed at the outset of our expedition.
+
+The fact soon stares us in the face that we have been no more successful,
+in our efforts to cross the thermal equator and pass into high southern
+latitudes, than the stupid plants and animals before us; and Mr Darwin's
+faith in high mountains springing from equatorial lowlands, disappears in
+jest and derision as we all good-humoredly agree "to break conditions,"
+and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and
+New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve
+itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness,
+hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great
+commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of
+exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The
+Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by
+us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the _Herald_, of the
+date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific
+expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "_The Great Wild-Goose
+Chase after the Thermal Equator_"--presenting one of the most humorous
+bits of sensational pleasantry ever given to the American public.
+
+But an apology is due the staider reader for the seeming levity of this
+narrative adventure. The exposition of Mr. Darwin, though widely accepted
+on both sides of the Atlantic by the scientific world, has seemed to us
+too trivial for serious reply. If we have leaped over vast periods of
+time, it makes no difference with the argument. So long as the thermal
+equator, or more properly the equatorial zone, or any part of it, lies
+between the warm or cold temperate forms, whether plants or animals, and
+their point of destination in the southern hemisphere, they can never
+migrate thither, any more than the right whale of the arctic seas can swim
+the equatorial oceans. Nothing is gained by going out of the way to climb
+mountains, except to hopelessly retard the return of both plants and
+animals to their native zones. If we have not demonstrated this fact to
+the reader's fullest comprehension, it will be useless for him ever to
+write a Q.E.D. at the end of any proposition.
+
+It is true that some eminent astronomers and physicists hesitate to
+accept the theory that these glacial epochs are due to the eccentricity
+of the earth's orbit. But the argument favoring it is well fortified and
+ably advanced, and if we add to the astronomical considerations involved,
+the physical proofs of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, caused
+by the excessive accumulation of ice about either pole, and the probable
+shifting of the Gulf stream to a southerly direction during the glacial
+period north, it is difficult to resist the conviction that the real
+cause of glaciation has been suggested in this theory. With all the ice
+now accumulated about the south pole transferred to the north pole, it
+would make an ice-cap of over thirty miles in thickness at the pole, and
+one sloping in all directions southward to about 60°. This accumulation,
+it is claimed, would so change the earth's centre of gravity as to cause
+all the equatorial warm waters to flow southward instead of northward, as
+they now do.
+
+This would certainly seem to be a most wonderful provision of nature, as
+well as one strongly calculated to impress the human mind with the belief
+that an Infinite _Pre_vision lies behind all possible _pro_vision, whether
+witnessed in the heavens or in the earth, in astronomical or physical
+phenomena. Everywhere we see infinite perfection, combined with infinite
+beneficence, in the adaptation of means to ends. Nothing runs to
+waste--all things are conserved for use.
+
+But in all the outspoken grandeur of the universe, there is nothing so
+grand, in exhibition at least, as the simple faith of a child, that "He
+who watereth the hills from his chambers," and "causeth the day-spring to
+know his place," will watch over the trustful little sleeper during the
+darkness and silence of the night.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+The Distribution and Premanence of Species.
+
+
+
+Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the
+advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while
+remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones,
+says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United
+States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--_i.e._ Eastern North
+America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference apart, we
+find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our
+distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe,
+thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general
+physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and
+other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all
+the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great
+similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the
+astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity,
+had it been found to exist.
+
+Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
+plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
+zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
+different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
+and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
+therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
+known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
+all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
+Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
+alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
+States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
+Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
+pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
+correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
+same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
+of all the mountain systems of the globe.
+
+These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
+geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
+objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
+friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
+climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
+that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
+ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
+"coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
+insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
+bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
+the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
+the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
+mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
+as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
+Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
+attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
+hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
+seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
+
+When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon
+these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There
+is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the
+rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the
+lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and
+far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away
+from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be
+chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if
+all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have
+been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross
+the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions
+of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and
+explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of
+plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.
+
+The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the
+explanation wanted. It explains not only _why_ these alpine flora appear
+where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also explains
+all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the foregoing
+chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the earth
+responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine harebell
+is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it wears. And
+so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads and
+sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never grew
+before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang therein
+"its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the black alder
+will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far its current
+may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the supply of
+natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate her as
+"instinct with music and _the vital spark_."
+
+If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of
+nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert
+that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her
+grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find
+out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to
+accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with
+our chronic neglect of what nature _does_, is the great scientific
+stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that
+certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from the
+_absence_ of "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the
+reverse of this undeniable proposition, and agree that the _presence_ of
+necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their
+appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal
+law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the
+universe itself?
+
+For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical
+distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British
+Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As
+early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in
+his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in
+connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of
+the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution;
+while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in
+his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in
+Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our
+botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense
+plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have
+given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed
+vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and
+scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of
+any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to
+question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the
+array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon
+the audacious questioner.
+
+But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any
+longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or
+fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never
+meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well
+in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without
+knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many
+superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and
+diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough
+daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice
+them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the
+more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the
+truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional
+grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out
+the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole
+business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a
+delight instead of a burden.
+
+But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown,
+or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come
+from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms
+come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical
+rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent,
+for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that
+all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is
+dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now
+only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his
+"necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all
+animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial
+conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine
+Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in
+the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may
+appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds,
+fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about
+100° C., and that _Bacteria, Torulæ_, and other infusorial forms, making
+their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from morphological
+cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital organism, but
+from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere present in the
+organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth into life whenever
+the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper incidences of
+environment occur.
+
+We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring
+forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as
+unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to
+such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary
+telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north,
+or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions
+occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a
+country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in
+which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the
+general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees
+peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in
+the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution
+of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to
+latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall,
+soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.
+
+But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for
+the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing,
+if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data
+for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the
+evolutionists have been spinning for us.
+
+Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials,
+more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year.
+We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only
+to find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we
+advance, or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our
+vast mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas
+thoroughfared and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits
+signs of becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in
+her demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of
+facts as the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future
+recognition. She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is
+likely to become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due
+to her methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out
+her hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to
+return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to
+adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna
+and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all
+indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of
+time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in
+character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to
+require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production
+and reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn
+her species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power
+above her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was
+brought forth."
+
+From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and
+wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to
+the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached
+out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as
+avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized
+forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so
+remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may
+be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties
+of the _Sequoia_, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs, poplars,
+hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions during
+the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown on the
+spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain
+undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a
+warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized
+forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively
+showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have
+worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in
+genetic value.
+
+There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical
+forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm
+inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial
+periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the
+earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formulæ, we can have no
+conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period
+named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest
+glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there
+have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can
+be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening
+maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It
+is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible
+glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who
+differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any
+other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his
+theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an
+interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and
+nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the
+present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have
+undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it
+require to work out even _one_ of Mr. Darwin's many evolutional changes?
+
+The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora
+and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be
+distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the
+varieties of the _Sequoia_ family, the oaks, beeches, firs, hazelnuts,
+etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be difficult to
+classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they cannot be
+placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled out of
+representative types. But why should our speculative botanists insist upon
+these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative forms" of
+which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has given us
+the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be claimed is
+that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions of years
+ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not
+repugnant, alliances, can produce
+
+            --"Streak'd gillyflowers,
+  Which some call nature's bastards."
+
+it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her
+alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of
+propagation. If she produced the _Sequoia gigantea_, or the great redwood
+tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous period, she
+has propagated it ever since according to her own loving methods, and it
+is idle to talk of the _Sequoia Langsdorfii_ as being the original
+ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of the sequoias.
+How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz that these
+trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in
+individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can
+never bear the fruit of the other.
+
+Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of the
+_Quercus_ or oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of
+ingenuity to show that the various members of this old and
+ancestrally-knotty family have all descended from two or three of the
+hardier varieties. He arrives at this conclusion from a geographical
+survey of what he would call the "whole field of distribution," and
+"the probable historical connection between these congeneric species."
+But science should deal with as few probabilities as possible,
+especially where experience furnishes no guide to certainty, and only
+the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never predicate
+probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some
+likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or
+otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we
+determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so
+much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in
+the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be
+absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a
+determinate judgment. The _Quercus robur_ may furnish the maximum test
+to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other
+variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M.
+De Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than
+twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded
+to be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long
+as the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one
+twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to
+determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished
+in the past.
+
+Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other,
+M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has
+governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has
+only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still
+speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may
+show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed
+to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because
+they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from
+the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like
+engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity
+of _idea_, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of the
+_individuorum similium_ in Jessieu's definition of species. But similarity
+must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere exists in
+nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the rarest
+possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million will be
+found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees of the
+same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and branching
+of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated covering,
+_Et sic de similibus_ everywhere, and with respect to every thing. Nature
+is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of similarity and
+tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the Platonic
+conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only a
+supplementary truth to that of _de similibus_. In the eye of the soul all
+objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as
+consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material
+universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[20] into
+the smallest possible number of similar or identical forms, may be all
+well enough to accomplish scientific classification; but the productive
+power of nature can never be limited by these mental processes of our own.
+
+The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently
+enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in
+speaking of the _Quercus robur_ and its probable origin, says that it is
+"traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks
+eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant
+shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest
+descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the
+Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats
+on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after
+the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The
+spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia
+was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring
+subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of
+the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which
+spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when
+conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no
+difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical
+conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the
+speculative botanist.
+
+Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they
+"have come into existence coincident both in time and place with
+preëxisting closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as
+individual localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of
+original progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily
+determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species
+preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place,
+their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by preëxistence.
+The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the
+appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a
+closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is
+lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to
+progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species
+preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than
+the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of
+observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic
+connection between the different species, or between even the same
+species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that
+advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization
+depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the
+dispersion of seeds.
+
+The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not
+depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of
+specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the
+possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of
+conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually
+concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection
+with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual
+distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of
+preceding conditions." [21] And he is forced to this conclusion by his
+virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged means of
+seed-distribution.
+
+The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and
+animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what
+they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can
+any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis,
+which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what
+forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is
+impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of
+thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel
+wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we
+make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties
+existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they
+were brought about by artificial processes.
+
+These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been
+practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in
+nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the
+distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend
+towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from
+other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies,
+resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens
+and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of
+species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced
+by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving
+tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of
+man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the
+category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In
+view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such
+as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders,
+tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard
+Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea
+of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the
+result of man's agency.
+
+Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to
+undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists
+and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among
+individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the
+absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the
+fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary
+limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These
+differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the
+question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature,
+rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new
+races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than
+certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease.
+But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to
+origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.
+
+The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the
+oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the
+Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that
+no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three
+million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million
+years, except that the _Sequoia gigantea_ may drop out, from the vandalism
+of man or the next glacial drift.
+
+M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique én Norwege," says "that each
+species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has its
+own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric
+gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture
+and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the
+physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary
+hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the
+point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without
+the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There
+was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth
+than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first
+instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.
+
+Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense
+of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees
+of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography,
+climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and
+tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that
+institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with
+a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern
+forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which,
+though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their
+leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be
+distinctly understood, is no alteration _produced_ by climate. Trees are
+made for and not _by_ climate, and they keep their characteristics
+throughout their whole range, which with some extends through a great
+variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we suppose he means
+by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and sub-arctic.
+
+In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of
+the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United
+States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and
+extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important
+elements--in fact, the _most_ important--is wanting in the tables before
+us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of specimens were
+obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have occurred, although
+it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He had his materials to
+work upon, and may have done the best that any one could with them. And
+yet it is just as important to know at what _elevation_ a particular tree
+grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes from a sub-arctic
+or sub-tropical region.
+
+But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with
+most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and
+trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other
+in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward
+from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We
+have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief,
+if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional
+grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He
+wants it distinctly understood that trees are made _for_, and not _by_,
+climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a
+localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by
+climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved
+throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and
+migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it
+would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or
+the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us
+neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the
+climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during
+their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.
+
+With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is
+undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made."
+They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring
+them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow
+now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of
+the ground made the Lord God _to grow_" every plant of the field, and
+every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the
+want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions,
+the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and
+growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest
+extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the
+climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees
+modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true
+physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearance
+_in_ climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without
+material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor.
+_Why_ they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we
+assume a preëxisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our
+subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth to
+bring them forth, after _his_ spirit (the animating soul of life) had
+moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of the
+earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more
+comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the
+perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled.
+Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that
+it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human
+soul. Besides, we find _it true in fact_, since the earth is constantly
+teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law impressed
+upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--
+
+              "If this faith fail,
+  The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,
+  And earth's base built on stubble."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+
+
+
+The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human
+reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to
+determine. It furnishes no objective _datum_ on which to predicate
+attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as
+the coordination of the _vis vitae_ in nature, which is an undisguised
+form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such attributes
+as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of thought. It
+admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical
+proposition. To say of life that it is "a coördination of action," might
+be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one; otherwise,
+crystallization would fall under its category, which is manifestly an
+illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible explication,
+analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands absolutely alone and
+apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital principle, or process
+of action, which all physiologists agree, for the sake of convenience and
+uniformity of expression, in designating as a _power, property, force_,
+etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin the subtlest and
+profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have returned but one
+answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great primal source of
+all life in the universe.
+
+Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases,
+borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "_Jupiter est genitor_,"
+"_Jupiter est quodcunque vivit_," etc., which, although uninspired
+utterances, strike their roots deeply into the _terra incognita_ of
+consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a
+paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman
+defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted,"
+he was as conclusively indulging in the _argumentum in circulo_ as if he
+had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as
+luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of
+Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement _x-y_ the antithesis of _x+y_--one
+of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed
+in the formula.
+
+To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the
+argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing
+enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in
+logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real
+definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of
+reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular
+phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern
+materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the
+"potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated
+differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the
+part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a
+whimsical enough way of putting it.
+
+According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full
+of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But
+this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once
+received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it
+is idle to predicate the _vis vitae_. For the great bulk of our globe is
+made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which
+neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the
+slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or
+plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the
+world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the
+chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the
+principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In
+whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in
+respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of
+empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems,
+than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward
+survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond
+this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to
+which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.
+
+The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abbé Spallanzani in
+modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few
+others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the
+inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its
+elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing
+germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller
+than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond
+the construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that
+the germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the
+earth, or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to
+bring forth."
+
+Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything
+which exists is referable to the _vis vitæ_--to non-corporeal, yet
+extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's
+bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with
+a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of
+the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory
+so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible,
+ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the
+entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of
+elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes
+with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it
+is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely
+numerous--is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm:
+everything that is, or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own
+spontaneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a
+germ, the totality of things."
+
+But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of
+being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism"
+landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the
+animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living
+things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they
+make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and
+wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature
+still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that
+this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable
+experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis
+of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent
+materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm
+rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in
+this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a
+scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely
+fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great
+advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena
+occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now.
+It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the
+panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so
+deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation
+in these directions.[22] Neither the lowest primordial cell, nor the least
+conceivable molecule, has yet been reached by the aid of the microscope,
+any more than the outermost circle of the heavens has been penetrated by
+the aid of the telescope. We must stop somewhere, and when we find a
+scientifically formulated statement which embraces all vital phenomena,
+and satisfactorily accounts for them all, whether it originally came from
+Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a matter of comparatively slight
+moment, so far as the scientific world is concerned. At least, it would
+seem so to us. But to talk of the _de novo_ origin of "living matter" as
+the result of the dynamic force of molecules--themselves concessively
+"dead matter"--is to indulge in quite as fanciful a speculation as the
+advocates of the panspermic hypothesis have ever ventured to suggest.
+Professor Bastian is forced to go back of his infusorial forms and
+fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from which he admits they are
+"evolved." But why evolved? Does not the principle of vitality lie back of
+the pellicle, as well as the fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he
+that the extremest verge of microscopic investigation has been attained,
+in what he is pleased to designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is
+a very potential word, and no one may yet know what boundless stores of
+absurd theory and metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![23] He admits
+that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can have
+nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic
+organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise
+into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin,
+that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in
+and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both
+animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in,
+or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution,"
+for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the
+developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree,
+lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or
+the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this
+developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of
+ancestry to be traced anywhere.
+
+This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the
+Darwinian _plexus_ squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen and
+Tréviranus agree that the infusoria met with have never presented similar
+characters when they have been encountered in different infusions; nor
+have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different portions of it
+have been _exposed to the incidence of different conditions_. The
+slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the materials employed,
+are invariably accompanied by the appearance of different organisms--these
+being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and unaccompanied by any of the
+familiar forms." Other writers of equal eminence in this field of
+investigation have not only observed the same characteristics, but
+encountered the same difficulties in classification, from the very great
+diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms. So great is this
+diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that little certainty
+or value can be attached to the classifications already made. Even
+Professor O.F. Müller, after he had convinced himself that he had
+discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a single
+genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut them all
+down to mere modifications of one and the same species.
+
+We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of
+emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of
+different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The
+presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically
+averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of
+"conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital
+phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the
+mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of
+any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected,
+it will produce _some_ form of life; not because it contains this or that
+morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100° C--that to which
+it is experimentally subjected before microscopic examination,--but
+because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the required heat-test
+or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible by heat as by
+glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the proper
+conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in either the
+quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion, is, as these
+eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the appearance of
+different forms of life, just as the slightest change in soil-conditions,
+such as that produced by the presence of one species of tree with another
+in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the appearance of another and
+altogether different plant, as well as truffle tuber.
+
+But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to
+combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we
+refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its
+complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme
+simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in
+the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is
+formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements
+that take place _in invisible colloidal molecules_--a process which is
+essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived from
+lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded
+definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a
+hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all
+materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no
+such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed.
+There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resulting
+_from_, not _in_, the _vis vitæ_, or the elementary principle of life in
+nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in abundance. This
+materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as a generic one
+even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed that the
+"proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of Professor
+Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. Müller, the "bioplast" of Professor Beale,
+etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in name. They are
+mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which exhibit the first
+active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size from the one
+hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second of an inch in
+diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks of
+semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous
+layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they
+were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder
+supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is
+the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the
+plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the
+first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome
+of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on
+earth.[24]
+
+But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter,
+any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move,
+pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs
+with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the
+microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as
+essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or
+megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper
+response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the
+marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or
+classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter,
+we can never predicate _vitality_ of it, any more than we can predicate
+_intellectuality_. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents no greater
+incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter." These
+qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature, not
+to insensate matter. To assert that life results _from_ "certain
+combinations and rearrangements of matter," and not _in_ them, is utterly
+to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them together
+that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an object of
+perception. Without the _vis vitæ_, or some germinal principle of life,
+lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of matter," and
+determining the movements of their constituent molecules, there could be
+no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a correlate of a
+force without the actual existence of the force itself. [25]
+
+The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive
+structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living
+organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is
+endowed with the property or power of producing life _de novo_, or, as
+Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living matter"
+which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but whether they
+die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and more potentially
+endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those following their diagnoses
+to determine. They further claim that the same law of vital manifestation
+obtains in organic solutions as in the structureless mass they call
+"protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed with the same potentiality of
+originating life independently of vital units, or _de novo_, as they more
+persistently phrase it. But why speak of _unfolding_ "new-born specks of
+living matter?" "To unfold" means to open the folds of something--to turn
+them back, get at the processes of their _infoldment_. It implies a
+pre-existing something, inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a
+germ, what is this pre-existing vital something which their language
+implies? Is our scientific technology so destitute of definitional
+accuracy that they cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without
+committing half that number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born
+specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by
+sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian,
+should trip in this definitional way.
+
+"Living matter," _born_ of what? Certainly not of _dead_ matter. Death
+quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the grave.
+It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of matter in
+which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly ceased, if,
+indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use language
+with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter," whatever the
+phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken nothing. The
+pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is there any birth
+from unquickened matter. Animals _bear_ young, trees _bear_ fruit, but
+force _produces_ results. What then quickens protoplasmic matter? Neither
+vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are to credit the materialists.
+They would scorn to postulate such a theory, or accept any such absurd
+remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is rather "molecular force"--a
+physical, not a vital unit--that gives us these "new-born specks of living
+matter." [26] This is what they would all assert at once, in their
+enthusiasm to enlighten us on a new terminology.
+
+But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the
+subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic
+force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in
+the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived.
+And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond
+microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of
+either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than
+that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is
+going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence
+adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living
+organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one
+is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this
+subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his
+antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and
+deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of
+molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole
+controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the
+visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated
+sky-mist" beyond it.
+
+All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic
+matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain
+forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life:
+But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher,
+more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether
+unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital
+unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These
+primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the
+microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains
+as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative
+hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist
+is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any
+advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and
+the other the synthetic method.
+
+This is the materialistic argument covering the _de novo_ origin of living
+organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they assert, that
+these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or vital units,
+than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is, come from
+pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is overlooking all
+generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of action. Crystals
+are inorganic matter which _form_, do not _grow_. They are mere
+symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are produced by some
+law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of their
+constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no beginning
+or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric solids, they
+remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic, not
+functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of
+crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us.
+Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation,
+not of mere aggregation.
+
+But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the
+materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still
+insist, between the preëxisting germs of crystals and plants--or the only
+difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles of
+matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing diversified
+forms and structural changes than the more highly favored vital particles,
+such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the plastide, etc. The one
+represents mere crystallizable matter, the other the more complex
+colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of producing a much
+greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they concede, end here. But
+the difference is world-wide when we come to processes--the true
+experimental test in all classification. Crystallizable substances
+_crystallize_--that is all. They pass into a fixed and immovable state,
+and mostly into one as enduring as adamant; while colloidal or albuminoid
+matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no fixed forms--only those that
+are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so marked a feature, in respect
+to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the
+more distinctive name of "ephemeromorphs," in place of _infusoria_. But
+all these primordial forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with
+a solitary crystal. Everywhere the statical unit _forms_, the dynamical
+unit _grows_; the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one
+solidifies, the other opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the
+embrace of eternal silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and
+makes nature resonant with praise.
+
+Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain
+microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo
+in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental
+tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of algæ. They attribute
+their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation of
+filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the
+latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes
+constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic
+tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of
+molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary
+conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or
+appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating
+either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these
+materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this
+connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in
+which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals,
+in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living
+organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular
+formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would
+expect to encounter from them.
+
+M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that
+he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms)
+_at will_, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably
+true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as to _his_
+(M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field
+with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to
+do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to
+plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, and
+_vice versa_, then he might be said to have produced corn _at will_. And
+so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce
+one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by
+any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life
+in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that
+without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as
+complete in one form as another,--
+
+  "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
+  As the rapt seraph that adores and burns."
+
+All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the
+production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of
+nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing
+chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental
+flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the
+action of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and
+if he studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much
+the laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.
+
+Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls
+"new-born specks of living matter" are produced _de novo_, that is,
+independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life
+implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life
+with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as
+plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively
+shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks.
+But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal
+under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by
+experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one.
+His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk about
+_de novo_ production is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were it
+possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed, seed,
+underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with just as
+diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the gigantic
+conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance again, and
+some plants might drop out of the local flora; but the _Pater omnipotens
+Æther_ of Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the
+earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body, in all the
+prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[27]
+
+But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the
+right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are
+anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they
+resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks,
+they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in
+saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more
+satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even
+Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they
+thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in
+countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his
+accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the
+experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is
+a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital
+unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat.
+Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of
+such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is,
+that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy
+and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific
+explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs"
+primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions,
+and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But
+in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip
+in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.
+
+The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it
+conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural
+forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or
+inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system
+presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms
+of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular
+crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will
+forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine
+Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change
+itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from
+eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living
+types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless
+crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In
+this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline
+argument of the materialists has its value.
+
+The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of
+their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting
+statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions
+that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living
+organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions,
+nor should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the
+validity of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If
+they insist upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a
+crystalline "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they
+are effectually estopped from denying the presence of vital units in
+dynamical aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction
+that the process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one
+case, eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn
+round and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and
+certain, but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms.
+If vital units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units,
+statical units, and morphological units, should fall into the same
+categories of judgment.
+
+A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists
+and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in
+attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by
+his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases
+necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "_the
+continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations_." This
+definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of
+Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the
+phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them,
+fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any
+other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious
+formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand on it, but only
+in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all living things,
+are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number of little boxes,
+one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of all contains the
+germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was hardly a legitimate
+characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of "continuous
+adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box adjusted to the
+external relations of another. The definition is really that of a piece of
+working machinery--any working machinery--and was designed to cover Mr.
+Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by molecular force.
+
+But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations
+to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the
+upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration
+of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely
+external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its
+external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of
+causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the
+characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the
+distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its
+hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and
+electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all
+showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or
+relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life,"
+according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an
+automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to
+external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor
+Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these
+automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment
+of their internal to their external relations is continuous.
+
+The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" encouraged Professor
+Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: "Life," he
+says, "is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of
+growing by selection and interstitial appropriation of new matter (what
+new matter?) which then assumes similar qualities, of continually varying
+in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M),
+and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions
+of its own substance."
+
+It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this
+definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best
+aid him by grammatically analyzing its structure. And,
+
+1. "Life is capable of growing." We are glad to know this. As a vitalist
+it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back
+seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We
+let its "unstable collocation" pass for what it is worth, and stick to our
+grammatical analysis.
+
+2. "Life grows--is capable of doing something." This assurance positively
+encourages us.
+
+3. "It grows by selection and interstitial appropriation." This is still
+more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we
+feel, is increasing in potentiality.
+
+4. "By appropriation it enables _new matter to assume similar qualities
+to old matter_." This makes us more confident than ever; we take another
+step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is getting to
+be almost a "potentiated potentiality," to adopt the style of
+materialistic phrases.
+
+5. "It causes matter _to continually vary in composition._" Bravo! we
+unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most
+comforting assurance. Life is assuredly getting the upperhand of
+Matter (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere "undiscovered correlate
+of motion"--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with
+it--throws it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more
+steps forward.
+
+6. "Life is capable of self-multiplication"--has almost a creative
+faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of "bravoes," and,
+stepping boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to "throw
+up the sponge," take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new
+definition of "life."
+
+But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his
+own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that
+all these attempts to define life as a non-entity only, tend to keep up
+the demoralizing idea that it is an actual entity. We entirely agree with
+him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the
+definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees
+this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on
+Ephemeromorphs: "Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of
+which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively
+useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and,
+what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an
+independent entity."
+
+It may be objected that our grammatical analysis of the professor's
+definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should
+cover a "living thing," and not "life" as an abstract, term. Our reply to
+this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is
+simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that
+his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other,
+either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition
+entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able
+pathological anatomist of the London University college is a "living
+thing." He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is
+capable of growing, by "selection and interstitial appropriation," in
+reputation at least, if not in the direction of "an independent entity."
+His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the
+ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal
+manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional
+labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea
+that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a
+London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or
+the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not
+in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His
+assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the
+phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.
+
+Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism
+cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any
+more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of
+gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing
+organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the
+universe (call it the will of God, gravitation or what you may) must have
+existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either
+advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over
+effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the
+phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To
+say that there can be no _manifestation_ of life without an organism is
+true; but to assume that the vital principle which organizes is dependent
+on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be the
+lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that
+cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental
+processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying
+the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.
+
+"Plato lived." He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant
+of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have
+looked upon as "the temple of God," and all the world would have
+recognized as a god-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek
+chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
+All agreed in this. And yet it was not the _habitat_ but the _habitant_
+that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest
+enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was
+the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling _Archeus_, presiding
+over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic powers
+therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even
+Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this,
+with all that his new terms "ontogeny" and "phylogeny" may imply. When
+potential life passed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it
+was not the pabulum that assimilated the man, but the man the pabulum. If
+this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case
+of plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the
+phenomenal manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a
+cabbage-stalk. In other words, if the animating principle of life--or, as
+the Bible has it, the "animating soul of life"--is not what manifests
+itself in material embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor
+Haeckel mean by his new term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines
+of descent in all organic beings?
+
+If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether _mal posé_. Pabulum
+is nothing without a preëxisting "something" to dispose of it. It is not
+so much as a jelly-mass breakfast for one of Professor Haeckel's
+"protamoebæ;" for if it were served up in advance, there would be none of
+his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it, much less any of
+his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in her "hand-book of
+cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch your hare. But our
+ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the hare and the curry, in
+serving up his pabulum to the "protamoebæ." The improvident pabulum
+"evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like, is eviscerated by them,
+as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life, therefore, begins in the
+tragedy of Mount Cithæron, it is to be hoped it will end in the delights
+of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+
+
+
+The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
+seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
+not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
+their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
+super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
+that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
+heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100°
+C--212° F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially when
+the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of fifteen or
+twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the light of all
+the experiments which have been made in this direction, there is some
+doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many, if not
+most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100° C, there is little
+or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more tenacious of
+life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is equally
+unquestionable.
+
+M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
+capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
+of 120° to 125° C. (248-257° F), while the same spores entirely lose their
+germinating power after an exposure for half an hour or more to a slightly
+higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on "The Action of Heat
+on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the proceedings of the Royal
+Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are capable of resisting the
+action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300° F, although exposed
+therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however
+diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question
+in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the
+seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible
+"germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth itself.
+
+We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
+materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
+they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
+no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
+by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
+between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
+conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
+other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
+obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
+Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
+protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
+in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
+Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
+any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
+homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
+give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
+soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
+any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
+character of the infusoria appearing therein.[28] The cells are living
+organisms springing from vital units, and can no more manifest themselves
+independently of these units than life can manifest itself independently
+of an actual organism. And they make their appearance in the proper
+environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its primordial germ or
+vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the soil. Everywhere
+the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the plant or tree
+precedes the natural seeds it bears.
+
+This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
+vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
+vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
+single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
+living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
+verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
+as we may into the _arcana_ of nature in search of exact scientific truth,
+and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
+propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
+and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
+inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
+predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
+or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
+Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
+we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
+universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
+all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
+infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
+such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
+as a vehicle of thought.
+
+To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
+may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
+metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
+without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
+operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
+intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
+things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
+unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
+the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
+God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
+successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
+if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
+outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
+insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
+conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
+the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
+outside of it.
+
+But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
+overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
+mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
+uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
+the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
+greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
+that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
+an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
+any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
+"We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
+attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
+universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
+themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
+overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
+one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
+other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
+yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
+completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
+which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
+therein, originally came.
+
+But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
+scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
+will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
+God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
+universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
+the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
+independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
+space, or time independently of eternity. [29]
+
+According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
+essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
+all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
+modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
+were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
+that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
+whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
+law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
+order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
+the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
+that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
+manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
+exhibited in scientific formulæ. The higher and more satisfactory
+induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
+made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
+till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
+organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
+point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
+give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
+causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
+which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
+potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
+necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
+inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.
+
+Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
+who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
+position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
+our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
+a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
+in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
+once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
+a universe
+
+  "Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."
+
+But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
+life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
+universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
+positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
+before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" _in tandem_, that
+the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
+induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
+of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
+to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
+reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
+mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
+nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
+almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
+although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
+proportions of that scientific toy.
+
+Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
+matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
+countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
+different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital
+unit" can be _evolved_, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
+"primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
+can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
+chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
+nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
+is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
+multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
+that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
+confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists
+upon drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads
+of living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
+earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
+organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and
+vegetal world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the
+identical language we here use.
+
+And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
+grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
+can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
+vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
+unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
+point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
+microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
+units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
+insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
+crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
+beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
+know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
+development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
+the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
+knows nothing--we know nothing.
+
+Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
+now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
+phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
+exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
+a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
+studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
+of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
+that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
+fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
+tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
+specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
+undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
+Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
+but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
+knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
+beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
+reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
+contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
+He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
+glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
+distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
+vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-_unit_ and
+the dog-_unit,_ instead of falling back on his bioplastic spinners and
+weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing workers of the
+one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is far more
+rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict scientific
+methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to a single
+direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.
+
+There is a world-wide difference between the dog-_ego_ and the man-_ego;_
+but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
+bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one
+master-_ego_ as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall
+differentiate this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they
+shall work. Not a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed
+by the one head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts
+determine nothing, direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as
+obediently as a galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate
+movements, all molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic
+force, are the work of the one vital webster, or principle of life,
+within--that which shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is
+true from the first or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ,"
+until the real occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic
+weavers, and lies down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines
+its own structural form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to
+the slightest impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The
+occupant of this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers
+after another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of
+woven texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the
+same _physical_ dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for
+his master, carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in
+the chase, gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home,
+exhibits the same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to
+sleep, dreams of the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to
+engage. This continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty
+years of physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen
+times over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
+undifferentiated "dog-unit."
+
+Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
+fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
+bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
+sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
+led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
+expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
+cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
+one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
+only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
+as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
+conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
+re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
+producing it _de novo_ have not yet been ascertained, nor is it likely
+they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction between
+crystallizable matter and living substance.
+
+And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
+destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
+germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
+environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
+or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
+composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
+adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
+developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
+true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
+morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
+constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
+doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
+forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
+spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
+prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
+the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
+nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
+into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.
+
+In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
+recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
+at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
+ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
+have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
+certain small fishes of the _Cyprinidae_ and other families, have made
+their appearance therein.[30] Nobody has thought of stocking these
+standing pools of water with the fish in question, nor has there been any
+surface overflow to account for their presence, nor any other apparent
+means of transportation, if we except the fish-catching birds, and they
+generally swallow their food in the water or on the nearest tree to the
+point of capture. Any theory accounting for the presence of spawn is,
+therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have traversed hard clay
+deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to make their appearance
+in these waters. The only possible explanation of this class of phenomena,
+and they are by no means infrequent, is to be found in "favoring
+conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are primordial
+manifestations of life, and such as would have made their appearance in
+any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under the same
+favoring conditions.
+
+And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
+cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
+grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
+principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
+another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
+of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
+May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
+countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
+in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
+those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
+vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
+persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
+present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
+detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
+dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
+grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
+his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
+Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
+time, is not the question. It is the _fact_ of vital growth that we are
+after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as well
+as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with sturdy
+old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all _vital_ law--"has her
+seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world."
+
+Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
+life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
+constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
+contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
+completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
+nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
+and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
+and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
+invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
+organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
+elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
+in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
+living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
+assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
+and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
+mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
+living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
+little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
+principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
+a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
+using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
+demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
+intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
+unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
+the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
+having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
+mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
+life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
+may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
+soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
+fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
+embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
+"dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."
+
+Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
+theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
+beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
+of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
+organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
+except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
+over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
+the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
+reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
+Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
+matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
+once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
+intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
+anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
+or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
+an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
+tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
+of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
+"dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
+fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
+endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
+limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
+ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
+sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
+nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
+Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
+been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
+highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
+force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
+bound to except.
+
+Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
+may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
+the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
+all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
+classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
+matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
+between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
+germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
+least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
+statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
+bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
+mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
+merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
+cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
+microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
+cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
+tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
+matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
+view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
+vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
+physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
+performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
+assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
+species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
+very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
+structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
+own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
+these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
+well as meaning.
+
+The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
+is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
+millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
+Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
+biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
+comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
+specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
+each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
+like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
+together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
+and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
+appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
+was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
+direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
+_in_ all living organisms, not _from_ them; directing Professor Beale's
+"bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of necessary
+plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first instance;
+observing no developmental processes by which one form of life laps over
+upon another, and following no order but that of universal harmony in the
+Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for existence, even among
+the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and the smallest and
+weakest must give place to the largest and strongest everywhere, and _vice
+versa_, as Time, the greatest of all rodents, gnaws away at the mystical
+tree of life. But in every living organism, from the lowest and simplest
+to the highest and most complex, all bioplastic spinners of filamentous
+tissue, all plastide weavers of membranous or spun matter, all epithelial
+bobbin-runners, and other anatomical helpers and workers, perform their
+respective tasks under the special supervision we have named, that is,
+under the higher unit of life. They all work for the advancement and
+well-being of the higher organism of which they form a component and
+necessarily subordinate part.
+
+The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
+and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
+from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
+evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
+wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
+far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
+mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
+accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
+other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
+not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
+carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
+and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
+made _his_ happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
+equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
+upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
+direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
+shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells.
+
+But decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale,
+although one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is
+that which makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have
+already referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
+altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
+half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
+vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
+the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
+and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
+Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
+something--a sort of _tertium quid_--between living and non-living matter.
+But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his carmine
+solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts, inferentially at
+least, that all other matter, in any and every living organism, is "dead
+matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no matter is living in
+any vital organism which has not been assimilated and built up into living
+membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case of man) to his will,
+as well as performing the autonomous functions of plants and the lower
+animals. For all these membranous tissues are innumerably thronged with
+bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the purposes of obedience to
+man's will, or of performing any autonomous function, but simply to supply
+the tissues with the necessary nutrient matter to make up for the constant
+waste that is going on in a healthy living organ. This waste is very much
+greater than has heretofore been supposed, so that the man or animal of
+to-day may be an entirely distinct and separate one, considered
+materially, from that of a year or more ago. And this averment would have
+a decided advantage over Professor Beale's, since, in meeting a friend, we
+might be certain that four-fifths of him at least was alive, while the
+other one-fifth was industriously at work to keep him alive, instead of a
+stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be, upon the street. Besides, it
+would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving
+themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale
+virtually does in the argument.
+
+The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
+life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
+exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
+are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
+weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
+plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
+song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
+and brilliant _roulades_, as if the little vocalist had caught its
+inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
+now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
+occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
+dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
+to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
+chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
+interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
+looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
+ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
+threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
+weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
+nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
+any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
+suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
+hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
+weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
+music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. _Where_ it is, not
+man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
+uplifted by inspiration, that--
+
+  "The soul of music never dies,
+     Nor slumbers in its shell;
+  'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,
+     And thence returns to dwell."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+
+
+
+Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which
+have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an
+"undiscovered correlative of force." Those who have the reputation of
+being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm
+of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly
+contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to
+eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of
+Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens
+where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its
+glory, this "undiscovered correlative of force," which they have indicated
+as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.
+Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles
+us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were
+they to define life as an "undiscovered force" simply, their definition
+would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in
+precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor
+metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never
+answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the
+success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this
+"correlative" of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since
+they are so chary of informing us themselves.
+
+A "correlate" of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal
+relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses
+nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relationship, such as
+father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.
+As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this
+particular force stands in some sort of relationship to the other forces
+of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the _material_ forces of
+nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relationship is
+what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the
+universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed
+relationship as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital
+force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or
+sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relationship, is not stated. The
+scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is
+to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to _x_ (the vital or
+unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and consequents
+together, and eliminating the value of _x_, we may mathematically obtain
+the value of vital force.
+
+But to eliminate the value of _x_ is what troubles them. Herbert Spencer
+has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any higher
+correlation than "molecular force;" nor can he definitely inform us
+whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he
+manifestly regards their relationship as constituting either a very
+attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the
+value of _x_, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and
+gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly
+contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in
+scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular
+force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not
+demolished, this machinery, in his recent treatise on "The Mystery of
+Life," we will spare it any further blows, and proceed to the
+consideration of "molecular force."
+
+Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us
+definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon
+to use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of
+"molecular attraction," or that force acting immediately on the
+integrant molecules or particles of a body, as distinguished from the
+attraction of gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it
+comes to ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to
+molecules, such as have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must
+feel our way with caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or
+rather of their materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather
+force, that is in them.
+
+It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a "molecule" is
+the smallest conceivable quantity of a simple or compound substance, as an
+"atom" is the smallest conceivable quantity of an element which enters
+into combination with other elements to form material substance. For
+instance, the smallest conceivable quantity of water is a molecule, while
+the smallest conceivable quantity of either of the two elements of which
+water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore,
+there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And
+since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may
+contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which
+lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest
+forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural
+alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter,
+and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man,
+knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into
+unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre,
+and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the
+general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on
+the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the
+actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest
+hypothetical data. It is the office of "molecular force," if there is any
+meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by "molecular attraction," to
+conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.
+
+If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man
+must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks
+and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended
+to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war
+with the principal phenomena of life, and should be classed with the other
+undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as "the
+fictions of a mechanical imagination." The truth is that these much abused
+and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in
+nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that
+inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a
+devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of
+quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at
+once seek quiet and loving companionship with kindred molecules, and
+retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from
+their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or
+constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living
+dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as
+perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be
+imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold
+of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery
+and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination
+of the molecules.
+
+If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about
+time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter,
+motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the
+multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for
+recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing
+the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional
+value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and
+vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their
+several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not
+emancipating language from the gross thraldom into which their "molecular
+machinery" has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the
+force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of
+fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less
+impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and
+things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences,
+coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable
+chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions
+of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and
+foot--under the one explanatory head of "force-correlation." We protest
+against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe,
+even if it were practicable under scientific methods.
+
+But Professor Tyndall denies that "molecular groupings" and "molecular
+motions" explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating
+life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[31] And it would be
+difficult to cite a stronger and more determined materialist as authority
+on the point we are considering. He says: "If love were known to be
+associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the
+brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as ignorant as
+before, as to the cause of motion." But there is no proof that the
+molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary for
+keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the brain
+itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a state
+of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been
+exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of
+consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there
+can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one
+set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules,
+as seen in the object glass of the microscope, there is no absolute
+certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any
+life-manifestation, as heretofore assumed. Some quite as well defined
+forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to
+predicate vitality of them.[32] These infinitessimal and constantly
+varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth part of an inch
+in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may owe their
+oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations, and even
+their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes than
+those strictly "vital." And it should be borne in mind that their actual
+movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as their real
+dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic infusions only,
+they are presumably vital organisms rather than fomentative or mere
+filamentous yeast-manifestations.
+
+Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place
+under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that
+the "primordial cells" possesses in any degree the characteristics of a
+"machine," nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the
+character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to
+them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He
+says: "They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the shells
+scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which
+the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the
+cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted."
+This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional
+office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's "formed matter."
+The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and
+simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.
+Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial
+cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-shells have
+been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come,
+both the cells and shells, from the preëxisting vital units, or
+determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement,
+without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent
+tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only
+favor its manifestation.
+
+But some of the materialists claim that what we call "vital units," or
+invisible, indestructible germs,[33] are at best only "physical
+relations;" that they have nothing more than a hypothetical existence,
+without any independent recognizable quality justifying our conclusions
+respecting them. But may not this identical language be retortively
+suggested in the case of their "correlates of force?" What more than a
+hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm to get rid of
+all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a feature in
+their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have shown in the
+verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of cause and
+effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical aggregates, and
+even assign absolute identity of attributes; but when it comes to
+dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial identity only, and deny
+the presence of the law altogether.
+
+Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in
+controversy. In speaking of his "plastide particles," Professor Bastian,
+the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says:
+"Certain of these particles, through default of _necessary conditions,_
+never actually develop into higher modes of being." Here he makes the
+absence of "necessary conditions" the cause of non-development, while he
+stoutly denies that the presence of such "conditions" give rise to the
+development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he
+speaks of the elemental origin of "living matter" as "having probably
+taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when
+such matter was first engendered." But how his "sum-total of external
+conditions," acting upon _dead_ matter, can "engender" _living_ matter, is
+one of those "related heterogenetic phenomena" which he does not
+condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that he
+gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of
+life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.
+
+To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of
+this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon
+the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all
+life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be
+no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards
+structural development, but only external conditions acting upon "dead
+matter," in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or
+undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped
+stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the
+complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their
+integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous
+entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as
+well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements
+should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous
+complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life "engendered from
+dead matter" in the material universe.
+
+For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more
+resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the
+happening by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the
+"fortuitous concourse of atoms;" now it is the "fortuitous aggregate of
+molecules." By what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have
+dropped out of their scientific categories, and the molecules have been
+advanced to their commanding place in _absolute accidentalness_, is one
+of those unassignable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We
+can only account for it on the supposition that they have all become
+worshippers of that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn
+of Amalthea and plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of
+language and other much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable
+knack at disposing of them.
+
+The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two
+conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary
+environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.
+Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning
+incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see
+that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by
+merely substituting "molecular force" for "vital force," in the
+explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do
+take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary
+plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not
+dependent on the vital principle _as it acts_, rather than on the
+molecules _as they act_,[34] The higher force should always subordinate
+the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other processes, of nature. It is
+the vital principle that differentiates matter--the aggregate of
+molecules--not matter differentiating the vital principle. No "molécules
+organiques" can ever differentiate an ape-unit into a man-unit, any more
+than Professor Tyndall can fetch a Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an
+ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a man-unit, eternally a man-unit.
+
+Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed _unit_
+as "_une idée dans l'entendement de Dieu," _ (to use a better French
+expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off their
+own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that
+"life exists," and that it has existed from all eternity _as possible_
+in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic
+science is disposed to butt its head against this impregnable
+proposition, it can do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may
+happen to the inconsiderate head.
+
+For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as
+there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search
+and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the
+forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in
+the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they
+descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions
+of life, or passed upward and outward, in _Sirius-_distances, to the
+irresolvable nebulæ, where other and perhaps brighter stars might burst
+upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still enormous
+fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same. Wider
+and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the stellar
+swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the
+uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and
+Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of space,
+the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the
+world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished
+the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and
+hangeth the earth upon nothing--"_holdeth back the face of his throne and
+spreadeth his cloud upon it_."
+
+What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small
+specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call "living matter," or, in
+the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming masses which
+we call "dead matter," who shall say that "the secret places of the Most
+High" are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of God first moved
+through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all
+matter, there was not imparted to it that "animating principle of life" of
+which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting
+itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set
+aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological
+expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for
+scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their
+specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and
+molecular theories of life.
+
+But speaking of the higher forces as subordinating the lower, suggests
+that there should be something more definitely explained regarding the
+hypothesis of "differentiation," on which Mr. Herbert Spencer hangs so
+much of his mathematical faith in the true explication of vital
+phenomena. The term "differentiation" is not so formidable as it might
+seem to the general reader at first sight. As applied to physiological
+problems it should have the same determinate value, in expressing
+functional differences, as in the higher operations of mathematics.
+Nothing can, of course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things
+differentiate each other, even when functionally allied. The actual
+coëfficient sought is the difference effected, in functional value, in
+one of two independent variables. For all formulæ in differentiation are
+constructed on the hypothesis that only one of two variables suffers
+change. The differential coëfficient has yet to be determined which shall
+express the developmental changes in two variables at once. When,
+therefore, we attempt to extend the formulæ of differentiation to plant
+and animal life, we are confronted by a very formidable difficulty at the
+outset--the impossibility of determining an invariable coëfficient for
+any two variables. Besides, all attempts at differentiating an ape-unit
+into anything else than an ape-unit would be as impossible as to multiply
+or divide cabbages by turnips, or sparrows by sparrowhawks. Such
+divisions would give us no quotients, any more than their
+differentiations would give us a coëfficient. Physiological
+differentiation will, therefore, never help us out of fixed species or
+nearly allied types. We can bridge no specific differences by it. In the
+differentiation of the horse and the ass for instance, the superior blood
+will predominate in the preservation of types, and even the mule will
+kick against further differentiation. Nature would so utterly abhor the
+practice as resolutely to slam the door in Mr. Spencer's face, if the
+obstinacy of the mule did not kick it off its hinges.
+
+And nature would be quite as intractable in the case of
+"force-correlation," another of Mr. Spencer's redoubtable phrases. This
+term is quite recent in its application to animate objects, nor has it
+been long applied to inanimate. It is claimed to be a recently discovered
+force, and is one that the materialists have seized upon as the Herculean
+club with which to smite all vital theories to the earth. Its meaning, so
+far as it has any, is not difficult to get at. The simplest way to explain
+it, however, is the best. The reader is to understand that when he rubs
+two flat sticks together, the heat thereby engendered is not the result of
+friction, as all the world has heretofore supposed, but that the amount of
+force expended in rubbing the right-hand stick against the left-hand
+stick, is, by some law of versability, not over-well defined, transferred
+to the two sticks, and gets so entangled between their surfaces that it
+can only reappear in another and altogether different kind of force. When
+it leaves the hands and passes into the two sticks, it is, as the
+materialists assert, vital force. But as no force can be annihilated, the
+conclusive assumption is that it still exists somewhere. All of it, in the
+first place, went into the two flat sticks, and, when there, _ceased to be
+vital force._ Some of it disappeared, of course, in overcoming the inertia
+of the sticks, but the bulk of it became entangled with the superficial
+molecules of the two sticks, and reappeared as _heat_--another name for
+molecular force.
+
+This is what is meant by the "differentiation" of vital force into
+molecular force, and _vice versa_. But by what process of rubbing, under
+this law of versability, molecular force can be reversed, or
+differentiated back into vital force, Mr. Spencer has not condescended to
+inform us. The simple truth is, and the materialists will be forced to
+admit it in the end, that there is no verification of this theory beyond
+that of mere force-equivalence. For instance, it has been experimentally
+determined that a certain amount of fuel expended in heat is equivalent to
+a certain amount of mechanical force, not mechanical _work_, as M. Carnot
+puts it. For force is not expended in work until it is actually generated,
+and the amount generated, not that expended in work, is the real
+equivalence of the heat produced from fuel.
+
+Another problem is presented when it comes to determining the amount of
+generated force necessary to run a piece of machinery which shall
+accomplish a given amount of mechanical work.
+
+A far better phrase to express this equivalence of force has been
+suggested and used by several writers in what is called the "Transmutation
+of Force." For there is no correlation, or reciprocal relation, between
+heat as originally produced by the consumption of fuel and the force as
+engendered in steam before it is transmuted into work. Nor is there any
+real equivalence as between the two forces after its transmutation. A very
+large per centage of heat is lost in its transmutation from a latent form
+in fuel to an active or available form in steam, and a still greater loss
+in its transmission into work by machinery. Theoretically, there may be
+such an equivalence as that named, but practically it is impossible to
+realize it. And a theory that is impossible of realization is of no
+practical utility in itself, and of little value as the basis of further
+theory. If, then, the theory of force equivalence is a failure in
+practical application, it furnishes a very poor basis on which to
+predicate force-correlation, or the doctrine of reciprocal forces. It is
+estimated, for instance, that a pound weight falling seven hundred and
+seventy-two feet, will, in striking the earth, impart to it a degree of
+heat equivalent to raising one pound of water 1° F. But the heat thus
+imparted can never be so utilized as to raise a pound weight seven hundred
+and seventy-two feet into the air.
+
+This shows that there is no actual reciprocity of relationship between the
+force as originally engendered and finally expended in work. Nor can it be
+shown that the original force is transmuted or changed into another and
+different kind of force by the operation. The force generated and the
+force expended are essentially one and the same, as much so as that
+transmitted from the power to the weight by means of a rope and pulley.
+And the quality of the force is not changed, whether the weight be lifted
+by machinery or the human hand. Force, in its mechanical sense, is that
+power which produces motion, or an alteration in the direction of motion,
+and is incapable of being specialized, except in a highly figurative
+sense, into a thousand and one correlates of motion. But these
+miscellaneous and figurative forces are not what we are considering. The
+doctrine of force-correlation takes no such wide and comprehensive sweep.
+It embraces neither the force of wit, nor the force of folly; but
+mechanical force and its equivalents. The force exercised by the human
+hand in lifting a weight either with or without rope and pulley is, in
+every definitional sense of the word, mechanical force. For the arm and
+hand are only the implements, or mechanical contrivances of nature, by
+which the will-power transmutes itself into work, or, more properly
+speaking, transmits itself from the point of force-generation to that of
+force-expenditure. And this is precisely the office performed by all
+mechanical contrivances for the transmission--not transmutation--of force.
+And the most perfect machine is that which transmits the engendered force,
+with the least possible waste or abandonment, to its point of ultimate
+expenditure in work.
+
+All these hypothetical correlates of force, therefore, predicated upon the
+doctrine of force-transmutation, have no foundation in fact, since the
+force transmitted from the point of generation to the point of expenditure
+undergoes no change but that of direction, in its passage along rope,
+wire, belt, pulley, shafting, etc. A man whose limbs have been paralyzed,
+may still will to remove mountains. The will-power is the same, but the
+mechanical contrivances for its transmission are wanting. Of the actual
+point or centre of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power,
+we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards
+the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and
+tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or
+pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a
+rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular
+changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely
+related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through the contracted
+tissues, electrifies the crowbar, or flashes into work from the point of a
+pickaxe. Whatever produces, or tends to produce, motion, or an alteration
+in its direction, is mechanical force, no matter from what force-centre it
+may start. When we can definitely determine the centre of vital force, as
+exercised in building up vital structure, _not in wielding pickaxes_, it
+is to be hoped we shall be able to distinguish, by the proper correlates,
+vital force from that which is mechanical. But the task is manifestly a
+hopeless one with the materialists.
+
+Professor Beale positively denies that there are any such physical
+force-relations as those claimed by the materialists, and asserts that
+vital force bears no relation, or correlation, to either chemical or
+physical force; that the one is a distinct and separate factor from the
+other, and cannot be interpreted in the same force-formulæ. He says: "The
+idea of motion, or heat, or light, or electricity _forming_ or _building_
+up, or _constructing_ any texture capable of fulfilling a definite
+purpose, seems absurd, and opposed to all that is known, and yet is the
+notion continually forced upon us, that vitality, which does construct, is
+but a correlate of ordinary energy or motion."
+
+But after devoting so much time to "force-correlation," and
+"force-differentiation," the advocates of "molecular-machinery" may feel
+themselves neglected if we dismiss their favorite hobby without further
+notice. The precise parentage of this term is disputed, but it has any
+number of _putative_ fathers. We have spoken of the size of the molecules
+themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled together on the
+point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now consider the size
+of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own machine, and is
+provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact, it is a very
+nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the molecules,
+instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules run the
+machines. Unfortunately, the question is one that can never be determined.
+The requisite scientific data will forever be wanting.
+
+But Professor James C. Maxwell, now, or quite recently, filling the chair
+of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, England, has
+furnished us with _approximate_ calculations. On the strength of his
+approximations we will proceed to consider the dimensions of these
+wonderful little machines. And first, it may be axiomatically laid down
+that these molecular machines, which either run the molecules or are run
+by them, can never exceed the size of their respective molecules.
+Conceding, then, that each one of these machines exactly fits into its own
+molecule, so as to present identically the same dimensions--as well as
+their largest possible dimensions--it would require two millions of them,
+placed in a row, to make one millimetre, or the one three hundred and
+ninety-four thousandths of an inch in length, or seven hundred and
+eighty-eight billions of them to make one inch! Who will ever be staggered
+at _Sirius_-distances, after this? And who will deny that an infinite
+world lies below the point of our microscopic vision, if not an Infinite
+kingdom and throne beyond our telescopic glance?
+
+But, following the same high authority in experimental physics, let us
+consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not
+marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions
+of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply
+give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system.
+Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing
+in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet
+kicking of the beam, just a fraction between four and five grammes, or--to
+differentiate the weights--a small fraction over one-tenth of an ounce!
+
+But why not get down to the atoms, of which the molecules are only the
+theoretical congeries, and marshal the "atomic forces" into line? These
+embryonic atoms are much the braver warriors, and, when summoned to do
+battle, spring, lithe and light-armed, against the elemental foe. They are
+no cowardly molecules, these atoms, but make war against Titans, as well
+as Titanic thrones and powers. The elements recognize them as their body
+guardsmen, their corps of invincible lancers, their bravest and best
+soldiers in fight. And they are wholly indifferent as to the legions of
+molecules arrayed against them, and would as soon hurl a mountain of them
+into the sea as to sport with a zephyr or caper with the east wind. Why
+not summon these countless myriads of bright and invincible spearmen, to
+batter down the walls of this Cretan labyrinth of Life? An army of these
+would be worth all the molecules that Professor Maxwell could array in
+line, in a thousand years. No life-problem need remain unsolved with their
+bright spears to drive the tenebrious mists before them. Even Professor
+Tyndall's "fog-banks of primordial haze" would be ignominiously scattered
+in flight before these atomic legions. Let our materialistic friends
+summon them, then, to their aid. The field of controversy will never be
+won by their molecular "Hessians." The ineffably bright lancers that stand
+guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout
+the vitalistic enemy. Advance them then to the front, and, beneath the
+shadowy wing of pestilence or some other appalling ensign of destruction,
+the abashed vital squadrons will flee in dismay.
+
+But let us pass from scientific speculations to alleged scientific facts.
+In a paper read by Dr. Hughes Bennett before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1861, its author says: "The first step, in the process of
+organic formation, is the production of an organic fluid; the second, the
+precipitation of organic molecules, from which, according to the molecular
+law of growth, all other textures are derived either directly or
+indirectly." Here again the molecules, and not the elementary atoms, are
+advanced to the front, and not a little anxiety is shown, in a
+definitional way, to identify vital processes of growth with crystalline
+processes of formation. But Dr. Bennett entirely mistakes, as well as
+misstates, the process of vital development, if he does not overlook the
+law governing the formation of crystals. There can be no symmetrically
+arranged solids in an inorganic fluid without the presence of some law, or
+principle, definitely determining, not the "precipitation," but the
+"formation," of crystals. The inorganic particles are not precipitated or
+thrown downward, any more than they are sublevated or thrown upward. The
+process is one of formation, not precipitation. Every crystallographer,
+not hampered by materialistic views and anti-vital theories, admits the
+presence of a fixed and determinate law governing each crystalline system,
+whatever may be the homologous parts or the unequal axes it represents.
+
+And so of the equally undeviating law of vital growth. Life comes from no
+mere "precipitation of organic molecules," as Dr. Bennett would have us
+believe. If so, what is it that precipitates the molecules? They can
+hardly be said to precipitate themselves. To precipitate, in a chemical
+sense, is to be thrown down, or caused to be thrown down, as a substance
+from its solution. What, then, causes the molecules to be thus
+precipitously thrown down from a fluid to a solid, or a semi-solid, state?
+It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the
+molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of
+nature--one presupposing an intelligent law-giver--to effect the
+"precipitating process," if any such really exists.
+
+But it does not exist. The first step is one of development and
+growth--the manifestation of functional activity--the building up of
+organic or cellular tissue. The exact process, in the case of seed-bearing
+plants and trees, is well known. All those familiar with the
+characteristic differences of seeds, their chemical constituents, their
+tegumentary coverings, rudimentary parts, etc., thoroughly understand the
+process in its outward manifestation. There is no precipitation of
+molecules as in an organic fluid, unless the albumen lying between the
+embryo and testa of the seeds, and constituting the nutriment on which the
+plant feeds during its primary stages of growth, can be called a fluid. It
+throws none of its characteristic ingredients downward any more than
+upward. Indeed the greater tendency of its molecules is upward rather than
+downward, in the "molecular processes" (vital ones) by which the embryonic
+cell is started upon its career of plant-life. The celebrated Dr. Liebig
+says of this albuminous environment: "It is the foundation, the
+starting-point, of the whole series of peculiar tissues which constitute
+those organs which are the seat of all vital actions." In the case of
+animal life, this albumen abounds in the serum of the blood, enters
+largely into the chyle and lymph, goes to build up the tissues and
+muscles, and is the chief ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the
+brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to
+coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries
+to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less
+insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140° to 160° F.
+
+When the seed is planted or placed in water, it first commences to swell
+from the absorption of the water or moisture of the ground by the pores of
+its external covering, the favorable temperature being from 60° to 80° F.
+It gradually expands until its outer membranes burst, and its initial
+rootlets clasp their hold upon the earth. From this point its several
+stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the
+first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a
+change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it
+would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in
+decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the
+grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the
+Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the
+decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened
+into life--ascends into the bright light, the warm sunshine, the
+refreshing presence of showers and dews. In this way it fulfils its
+providential purpose of yielding to the sower the more munificent life
+which he is forever seeking to attain.
+
+Its germination is the springing up of the inner living principle of the
+grain, not its outer envelope or dead husk. This disappears in decay,
+except the small nutrient portion within which the germinal principle of
+life would seem to reside, and which undergoes a thorough chemical change
+in the process of passing from death unto life, or being assimilated and
+taken up into the new living structure. The Apostle's comparison
+distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from
+death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still
+more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the
+dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher
+and more perfect life--the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in
+the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and
+co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally
+constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing
+agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the
+present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and
+decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most
+beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death,
+and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of
+life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-Point.
+
+
+
+Granting that the assumption of Darwinism rests, as claimed, on the fixed
+and inflexible adaptation of means to ends, in the diversified yet
+measurably specialized processes of nature, there is no logical deduction
+to be drawn therefrom but that which traces the representatives of all the
+great types of the animal kingdom to one single source, and that not the
+Sovereign Intelligence of the Universe, but a mere "ovule in protoplasm,"
+or what may be defined, in its unaggregated form, as an inconceivably
+small whirligig, having motion on a central axis, but whether an
+independent motion of its own, or one derived from an Infinite
+Intelligence, the Darwinian systematizers are not bold enough to aver.
+They have too many _a priori_ scruples either to assert the one
+proposition or to deny the other. What set this little whirligig in motion
+is a mystery that lies beyond the purview of science, so called, and into
+the depths of this infinitessimal and most mysterious little chamber they
+refuse to go.
+
+They search not for the evidence of an Infinite Intelligence in the
+outermost circle of the heavens where the highest is to be found, and
+where a bound is set that we may not pass, but shutting their eyes to all
+the grander evidences of such an Intelligence, they dive down into the
+infinitessimal realm of nature and assume to dig out the sublimer secrets
+of the universe there. And this is their grand discovery: That this
+infinitessimal whirligig of theirs has not only whirled man into
+existence, but the entire circle of the heavens, with the innumerable host
+of stars that march therein, and all the boundless systems of worlds that
+roll in space. With this subordination of the Infinite to the
+infinitessimal, of intelligence to insensate matter, of divine energy, so
+to speak, to blind molecular force, they are satisfied; and, like the mole
+in the fable, conceive their little molecule to be the only possible
+creator of a stupendous universe.
+
+Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating
+theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or
+the old adage, _omne vivum ex ovo_--all life is from an egg. For they
+assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in
+protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being
+this little _ovum_ or cellule, from which have issued all possible
+organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory
+essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific coördination of its
+several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of this
+infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state of all
+matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of past time,
+not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so
+stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the
+first conception of it.
+
+Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of
+development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the
+reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the
+incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the
+"selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a
+beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things
+right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development
+begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he
+admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato,
+Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of
+legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."
+
+Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long
+one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined
+empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the
+universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive
+sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity
+for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's
+philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena,
+in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away
+the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new
+varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in
+obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."
+
+In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be
+called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that,
+however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of
+uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not
+only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical
+deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of
+uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or
+approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in
+the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link
+connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest
+known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher
+congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no
+saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The
+heights of science are not to be scaled _per saltum_, except as degrees
+may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[35]
+
+There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like
+the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of
+amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and
+improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what
+page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back,
+has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the
+relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of
+the _Infusoria_ possess the same or similar characteristics, and predicate
+relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants sometimes spring
+from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our diagnoses must be
+freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the chain of
+continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the imaginary
+foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most
+enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid
+partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been
+pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future
+discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science,
+inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no
+assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we
+constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of
+imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars
+into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of
+creation after truth.
+
+But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he
+meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the
+first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is
+from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate
+to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges
+it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his _primum
+mobile_--or on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the
+eye of imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not
+matter itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary
+constituent of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its
+unaggregated form, admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of
+comprehension; but rests entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here
+add that a system which begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in
+them--as that of bridging the chasmal difference between a gorilla and a
+Plato--can be dignified into a science only by a still greater stretch of
+the imagination--that of bridging the difference between the Darwinian
+zero and his ninety degrees of development in a Darwin himself!
+
+Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in
+philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists
+between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not
+self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic
+life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation
+existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of
+matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and
+there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as
+extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts
+are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction
+exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in
+our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where
+reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.
+
+And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once
+aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of
+these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have
+before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we
+follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the
+blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these
+intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found
+anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied
+upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as
+unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two
+ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No
+processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the
+elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual
+judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the
+world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to
+"Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.
+
+But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary _datum_ of
+consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on
+something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since
+science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged,
+furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of
+inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived,
+necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to
+the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its
+inseparable companion and guest.
+
+Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in
+the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, _was_ God,--or on Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and
+has only to go on _ad infinitum_ to whirl us out a God, as it has already
+whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this ovulistic
+whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm and man,
+since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the process
+has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between man and
+Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us nature
+evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a God
+presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations of
+the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."
+
+These evolutionists manifestly get the cart before the horse in their
+category of cosmological events. It is not inert matter organizing itself
+into life, nor any mode of physical or chemical action, nor any mere
+manifestation of motion or of heat, nor any other conceivable correlation
+of natural forces. None of these has enabled us to penetrate the
+mysterious _inner-chamber_ of life itself. For reasons obviously connected
+with our own welfare, He, from whom alone are "the issues of life," seems
+to have ordained that we should fathom the depths of both physical and
+chemical force, and beneficently wield and direct them to our own uses.
+But this vital force; this something that stands apart from and is
+essentially different from all other kinds of force, is of a nature that
+baffles all our efforts to approach. The power to grasp it, or even to
+penetrate in the slightest degree its mysteries, is delegated to none. All
+attempts to lay bare this principle of vitality, or level the barriers
+that separate it from physical or chemical action, have utterly failed. We
+know no more of its essence now than was known a thousand years ago, and
+know no less than will be known a thousand years hence. To become masters
+of the mystery, we must enter the impenetrable veil within which the
+Infinite Intelligence of the universe presides,--who, we are told,
+"sendeth forth his spirit, and we are created, who taketh away our breath,
+we die and return to our dust." [36]
+
+We are just as much bewildered in respect to this vital principle in our
+classifications of the myriads of little creatures careering over the
+field of the microscope, as when we turn to the most marked formations of
+genera and species in geological distribution. The great trouble with Mr.
+Darwin's _vinculum_ is, that its weakest links are precisely where the
+strongest should be found, and _vice versa_. With a candor rarely
+displayed by a writer who is spinning a theory, he admits this. The
+geological record is not what he would have it to be. Whole chapters are
+gone where they are most needed, and nature's lithography seems constantly
+at fault. Independent species are now and then springing up where
+derivatives should be looked for, while derivatives are everywhere
+disappearing in non-derivatives. Many of the middle Tertiary _molusca_,
+and a large proportion of the later Tertiary period, are specifically
+identical with the living species, of to-day. What has "natural selection"
+been doing for this family in the last million years or more? Manifestly
+nothing, and less than nothing, for some of the species have dropped out
+altogether.
+
+These facts, and hundreds of others like them, are constantly obtruding
+themselves upon our attention to show, in harmony with the Bible Genesis,
+the immutability of species--the absolute fixity of types--rather than
+their variability, as claimed. If nature abhors anything more than a
+_vacuum_, it is manifestly any marked transition from fixed types, and she
+thunders her edicts against it in the non-fertility of all hybrids. The
+doctrine of variation lacks the all-essential element of continuity, and
+is oftener at war with the theory of the "selection of the fittest," than
+it is with the selection of the "unfit." The leap from Lepidosirens to
+Amphibians is no greater than the interval between any two species of
+animals or plants yet discovered, either fossil or living. The intervals
+are as numerous as the species themselves, and everywhere constitute great
+and sudden leaps, or such transitional changes as "natural selection"
+could not have effected independently of intervening forms--those that
+nowhere exist in nature, and never have existed, if we are to credit
+geologic and paleontologic records. There is everywhere similarity of
+structure, but not identity; and the nearer we approach to identity of
+structure the wider the divergence in similarity of characteristics. A
+bird may be taught to talk and sing snatches of music. But no monkey has
+ever been able to articulate human sounds, much less give them rhythmical
+utterance.
+
+Take the case of the wild pigeon, a subject that especially delights Mr.
+Darwin. Most of the deviations are confined to the domesticated breeds,
+and none of these rank in strength, hardiness, capability of flight, or
+symmetry of structure, with the wild or typical bird. There are
+well-defined deviations, but no sensible improvements, except to the eye
+of the bird-fancier. The deviations are simply entailed weaknesses, or the
+very reverse of what should appear from the "selection of the fittest."
+The fact undeniably is, that these variations are almost wholly
+abnormal--mere exaggerated characteristics, induced in the first instance,
+perhaps, by high cultivation and close in-and-in breeding.
+
+Turn these abnormal varieties loose, let them go back to the aboriginal
+stock, and these characteristics will rapidly disappear; that is, they
+will ultimately lose themselves or melt away in the original type. Mr.
+Darwin admits that the tendency will be to reversion, but he insists,
+manifestly without any positive proof therefor, that the greater tendency
+is to new centres of attraction, and not necessarily the primitive one.
+But this is mere assumption--sheer begging the question on his
+part,--since all the oscillations are incontestibly about the original or
+type centre.
+
+The same may be said of the typical races of men, like the negro and wild
+Indian of our prairies. You may lift them out of their primitive
+condition--temporarily suspend, if you please so to put it, their
+primordial attraction,--but, left again to themselves, they will go back
+to the original type; that is, their offspring will again infest the
+jungles and roam their native hunting-grounds. The process here is the
+very reverse of the Darwinian theory. Reversion, as a rule, follows the
+degeneracy of types, instead of there being any favorable homogeneous
+result, springing from a new centre of attraction. The Indian makes a
+splendid savage, but a very poor white man. Think of Red Jacket taking the
+part of Mercutio in the play or enacting the more valiant _role_ of
+Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth. An infusion of white blood does not
+help the matter, but rather makes it worse. Generally, the meanest Indian
+on the continent is your half-breed, and among the negroes there is no
+term so expressive of the contempt of that race, as that applied by them
+to a mulatto. The present condition of Mexico affords a striking
+exemplification of this law of reversion. The inheritable characteristics
+or variations, produced from an infusion of Spanish blood, are rapidly
+disappearing--the native blood whipping out the European. The potency is
+in the inferior blood, simply because it is the predominating one. The
+result has been no homogeneous new race, but a reversion, now manifestly
+in progress, to the type centre or aboriginal stock. And the curse
+pronounced by Ezekiel upon mongrel tribes--"woe unto the mingled peoples"
+may have a significance in this connection worth considering; but it
+manifestly falls outside the scope of our present inquiry.
+
+In considering the embryological structure of man, and the homologies he
+therein presents to the lower animals, Mr. Darwin thus conclusively (in
+his judgment) remarks: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
+quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in
+his habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."
+
+But Mr. Darwin's pronominal "we," in this connection, admits of
+qualification. He can hardly speak for all the scientific world at once.
+The philosophical maxim of Sir Isaac Newton--_hypotheses non fingo_--I
+build no hypotheses, make no suppositions, but adhere to facts--has a few
+followers still left. But what are Mr. Darwin's facts? Has he yet
+discovered the caudal man, except as the ever-fertile Mr. Stanley heard of
+one in Africa? And where is his monkey that first lost the prehensile
+power to climb trees? For bear in mind that it was the loss of this
+prehensile power that resulted in the caudal atrophy of our monkey
+progenitors, _who became men simply because they were tailless monkeys!_
+They had lost their power to climb trees, and accordingly had no longer
+any use for tails to let themselves down from the limbs. A "beneficent
+necessity" therefore, according to Mr. Emerson, dropped the tail as
+something decidedly "unfit." For the simplest tyro in Darwinian philosophy
+will see that the loss of the Catarrhine monkey's tail, if it ever
+occurred, could not have resulted from the "selection of the fittest." The
+deeper Emersonian philosophy of the "rejection of the unfit," affords the
+only solution of the difficulty, and then only on the assumption that the
+tail is an unfit appendage for the monkey.
+
+With the loss of his tail, in the light of this new genesis, the monkey
+necessarily ceased to be arboreal in his habits. He could no longer
+subsist on the fruits and nuts of trees, or take refuge therein from his
+enemies. He had to go to work and make weapons to defend himself--to
+construct tools--make and set traps, live on his wits, and not on his
+prehensile power to climb trees. He soon discovered, of course, that the
+longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride
+towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic
+philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this
+was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more
+masterly feats of agility than ever,--those dependent, not on muscular
+function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow.
+Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he
+improved under this maternal instructor we are left to infer from the
+paramount conclusion of Mr. Darwin, _that the demoralized monkey became
+the incipient man_!
+
+But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
+differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the
+loss of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's
+brain? or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
+differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous
+and demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every
+bone, muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the
+same. The chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are
+differently bundled and differently strung. In intonations of
+voice--symmetry of arms, legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic
+and land habits, the frog is a much nearer approach to man than the
+monkey, as all caricaturists, delineating aldermanic proportions, will
+agree. And Mr. Darwin might have immortalized himself by deriving the
+builders of the ancient pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats
+and croakers of the Swiss lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For
+everybody knows, or thinks he knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he
+didn't wag it off, he certainly absorbed its waggishness as a
+distinguishing characteristic of the "coming man"--the future Artemas
+Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral origin will also
+account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all human
+juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
+relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
+encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
+on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
+agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
+loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor
+does he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated
+development." He is more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than
+any other, and finds the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That
+is, he assumes that among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the
+Tertiary or some other period, some female monkeys were less hirsute
+than others, and that they naturally preferred males possessing similar
+characteristics. These divergencies were thus commenced, and, by
+continuous "sexual selection," the infirmity (for such he regards the
+loss of hair) was propagated until the race was almost entirely denuded
+or bereft of this covering. In the same way he accounts for nearly all
+the differentiations of the race, among the various tribes now or
+formerly inhabiting the earth. All have sprung from the same semi-human
+progenitors--_apes that lost their capacity to subsist as apes, and
+hence found it necessary to subsist as men_!
+
+The law of degeneracy has, therefore, had quite as much to do with human
+origins as that of progressive development. In fact, it is the paramount
+law from a Darwinian stand-point. For the loss of hair and of the
+prehensile power to climb trees are both conceded by Mr. Darwin to be
+serious defects and drawbacks in the ape family.
+
+But the law of sexual selection, as treated by the evolutionists, is not
+scientifically accurate, nor is it true in fact. The loving tendency of
+nature is to opposites, not likes. The positive and negative poles are
+those that play into each other with most marvellous effect. Each repels
+its like and rushes to the embrace of its opposite. Extremes lovingly meet
+everywhere. A brunette selects a blonde and a blonde a brunette, as a
+general rule in matrimony. A tall man or woman, with rare exceptions,
+chooses a short companion for life. Dark eyes delight in those that are
+light, and _vice-versa_. Everywhere nature seeks diversity, not
+similitude. The gayest and brightest feathered songster craves
+companionship in modest and unobtrusive colors. Diversity is the law of
+life, as equality, or versimilitude, is that of death. Neither natural
+selection, nor sexual selection, runs counter to this law. If Mr. Darwin's
+theory were true, that likes selected likes, then the two marked extremes
+which should have characterized the race, soon after its emergence from
+the semi-human state, should have been giants and pigmies, Gargantuas and
+Lilliputs. Otherwise "sexual selection," as treated by its author, plays
+no intelligible part in the economy of nature, except to counterbalance
+variability, not to propagate it.
+
+But the Darwinian assumption that the primeval man, or his immediate
+ape-like progenitor, came through "natural selection," that is, through
+the "survival of the fittest," is subject to one or two other objections
+which we shall briefly notice. And the first objection is not altogether
+a technical one. The term "fittest," as applied to a monkey, has at once
+a definite and comprehensive significance to us. It implies the presence
+of whatever is most perfect of its kind in the monkey _as_ a monkey, and
+not in the monkey _as_ something else than a monkey. They are all
+admirably adapted for climbing trees; and it is this adaptation that
+secures them safety, or complete immunity, in shelter from their
+enemies. To say that nature selects the fittest for them--for any
+species of monkey--by converting their forefeet into rudimentary hands,
+with a loss of prehension and no corresponding advantages in locomotion,
+is to use language without any appreciable significance to us. We can
+only say that what is fittest for the monkey is ill-fitted for man, and
+the reverse. This is all we can definitely predicate of them, from what
+we know of their anatomical structure, and the diversified uses to which
+it may be put.
+
+The fact is, as the Bible genesis shows, that every living thing is
+perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian
+variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of
+this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of
+Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth
+abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so,
+and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind,
+and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake is
+no less perfect than a Plato or a John Howard.
+
+When we consider man's upright position; the firmness and steadiness with
+which he plants his foot upon the earth; when we examine the mechanism of
+his hand, and the wonderful and almost unlimited range it possesses for
+diversified use; when we see how ill-fitted he is for climbing trees, yet
+how express and admirable for climbing among the stars, even to the
+outermost milky-way, the idea that what is fittest for him is fit for the
+chattering monkey, is too absurd to give us pause. And yet how does Mr.
+Darwin know that the monkey has been climbing up, all these hundred
+thousand or million years, into man, as one of the congenital freaks of
+nature, and not man shambling down into the monkey as a reverse
+congenital freak. Children have sometimes been born with a singular
+resemblance to the ape family, but no ape has ever, to Mr. Darwin's
+knowledge, produced issue more manlike than itself. The divergencies run
+the wrong way to meet the conditions of the development theory. We have
+had nearly five thousand years in which to mark these transitional
+changes, and yet the monkey of to-day is identical with that painted on
+the walls of ancient Meroe. In all this time he has made no advance in
+the genetic relation; and if we turn back the lithographic pages of
+nature for a hundred times five thousand years, we shall find no
+essential departure from aboriginal types.
+
+But the Darwinian hypothesis admits of a more conclusive answer than we
+have yet given. Past time, it will be conceded, is theoretically if not
+actually infinite; and in all past time, nature has been tugging away at
+Mr. Darwin's problem of the "survival of the fittest." It is no two
+hundred and fifty thousand years, nor two hundred and fifty millions, but
+an infinite duration of past time that covers the period in which she has
+been wrestling with this problem. How successfully has she solved it? In
+the Darwinian sense of the term "fittest," she has not so much as stated
+her first equation or extracted the root of her first power. She is
+manifestly as much puzzled over the problem as Mr. Darwin himself. He
+fails to see that the "survival of the fittest," necessarily implies, or
+carries with it, the correlative proposition,--the "non-survival of the
+unfit." And when such a law has been operative for an infinite duration of
+past time, the "unfit," however infinitely distributed at first, should
+have disappeared altogether, many thousands, if not millions, of years
+ago. If the evolutionists are dealing with vast problems, and assigning to
+nature, unlimited factors to express the totality of her unerring
+operations, they must be careful to limit the time in which any one of her
+given labors is to be accomplished. If she makes any progress at all, an
+infinite duration of past time should enable her to complete her work just
+as effectually as an infinite duration of time to come.
+
+But by what law of "natural selection," appertaining to a single pair of
+old world monkeys, have their offspring advanced to this regal state of
+manhood, while all other pairs have remained stationary, or precisely
+where they were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago or more? Why
+this exceptional divergence in the case of a single pair of monkeys? Why
+this anomalous, aberrant, and thoroughly eccentric movement on the part
+of nature? We had supposed that her operations were uniform--conformable
+to fixed laws of movement. The doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"
+implies this. Why then, should nature, in her unerring operations, have
+selected the fittest in respect to a single pair of Catarrhine monkeys,
+and at the same time rejected the fittest in the case of a million other
+pairs? If she had selected only the fittest in respect to this old world
+stock of monkeys, the entire Catarrhine family should have disappeared
+in the next higher or fitter group--a group nowhere to be found in
+geological distribution. The break between man and this Catarrhine
+monkey covers quite a series of links in the genetic vinculum;[37] and
+yet between the two we find no high form of a low type fitting into a
+low form of a high type, as we manifestly should, to account for all the
+diversified changes that must have taken place in the interim. And what
+is true of the types is measurably true of the classes within the types,
+as well as of the orders within the classes. Wide deviations in forms,
+as in characteristics, would seem to be the invariable rule; the
+blending of type into type, except perhaps in remote relationships, is
+nowhere visible.
+
+But if "variation" and "natural selection" have played important parts in
+the economy of nature, why may not "specific creation" have played _its_
+part also? Positive science can hardly flatter itself with the belief that
+it is rolling back the mystery of the universe to a point beyond which
+"specific creation" might not have commenced, or the divine fiat been put
+forth. To believe in the possibility of a rational synthesis, limited to
+sensible experience, or phenomenal facts within our reach, that shall
+climb from law to law, or from concrete fact to abstract conception, until
+it shall reach the _Ultima Thule_ of all law, is to carry the faith of the
+scientist beyond the most transcendental belief of the theologian, and
+make him a greater dupe to his illusions than was ever cloistered in a
+monastery or affected austerity therein as a balm to the flesh. We may
+substitute new dogmatisms for old ones, but we can never postulate a
+principle that shall make the general laws of nature any less mysterious
+than the partial or exceptional, or that shall in the long run, render
+"natural selection" any more comprehensible, or acceptable to the rational
+intuition, than "specific creation." For while one class of scientists is
+climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law
+that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more
+analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by
+divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief
+of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage
+of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the
+human mind is ever towards this abstract conception--this one
+all-encompassing law of the universe. It steadily speculates in this
+direction, and some of the highest triumphs of our age, in physical as
+well as metaphysical science, are measurably due to this tendency. The
+scientific mind is not confined wholly to experimental research. It is
+stimulated to higher contemplations, and is constantly disposed to make
+larger and more comprehensive groupings of analogous facts. It is fast
+coming to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,
+chemical affinity, molecular force, and even Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig, as only so many manifestations or expressions of one and the
+same force in the universe--that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force
+(not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens,
+"binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his
+season, and guides Arcturus with his suns."
+
+It is the boast of the Darwinian systematizers that their development
+theory not only harmonizes with, but admirably supplements and out-rounds
+the grander speculation of Laplace, termed the "Nebular Hypothesis," which
+regards the universe as having originally consisted of uniformly diffused
+matter, filling all space, which subsequently became aggregated by
+gravitation, much after the manner of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig, into
+an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+space. Of the correctness of this hypothesis it is unnecessary to speak.
+It is to the Darwinian speculation what the infinite is to the
+infinitessimal, and we only refer to it to bring out the vastness of the
+conception as compared to the latter theory, and to predicate thereon the
+more conclusive induction that an Infinite Intelligence directs and
+superintends all.
+
+In an area in the Milky-way not exceeding one-tenth of the moon's disc,
+Mr. Herschel computes the number of stars at not less than twenty
+thousand, with clusters of nebulae lying still beyond. As we know that no
+bodies shining by reflected light could be visible at such enormous
+distances, we are left to conclude that each of these twinkling points is
+a sun, dispensing light and heat to probably as many planets as hold their
+courses about the central orb in our own system. From the superior
+magnitude of many of the stars, as compared with the sun, we may
+reasonably infer that many of these vast sun-systems occupy a much larger
+field in space than our own. This would give an area in space of not less
+than six thousand millions of miles as the field occupied by each of these
+sun-systems. And as the distance between each of these systems and its
+nearest neighbor is probably not less than that of our sun from the
+nearest star, we have the enormous and inconceivable distance of not less
+than nineteen billions of miles separating each one of these twenty
+thousand stars or sun-systems, occupying a space in the heavens apparently
+no bigger than a man's hand. And yet Infinity, as we apprehend the term,
+lies beyond this vast cluster of constellated worlds! Where is Mr.
+Darwin's little whirligig in the comparison, or Mr. Emerson's vegetal
+stomach, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's "potential factors," to express the
+sum-total of all this totality,--this gigantic assemblage of stars
+clustered about a single point in the Milky-way? The human mind absolutely
+reels--staggers bewildered and amazed--under the load of conceptions
+imposed by these few twinkling stars, and is ready to exclaim,--
+
+  "Oh, star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
+  To waft us back a message of despair?"
+
+But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible
+in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with
+inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of
+the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how
+unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of _Mr. Darwin's little
+whirligig as the author of it all!_ No wonder the inspired Psalmist
+exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
+his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens
+declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the
+immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration
+lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem,
+while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing
+beneath the glebe!
+
+And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre
+of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of
+sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the
+Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding
+all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central
+point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with
+nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must
+be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe,
+to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical
+induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their
+orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why
+not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and
+utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It
+can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it
+has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our
+post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that
+science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not
+Infinite Intelligence accomplish?
+
+But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a
+coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal
+only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize
+quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the
+theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to
+a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in
+climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when
+concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the
+ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G.
+Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also
+insists that when _a priori_ speculation is lost in abstract conceptions,
+the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions of
+consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is
+undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we
+stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if
+in the august presence of Deity itself.
+
+But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of
+consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the
+universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In
+supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of
+Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of
+aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still
+going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or
+energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself
+in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the
+universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential
+energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already
+resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other
+heavenly bodies.[38] All the exterior planets, or a majority of them at
+least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled worlds, or those in
+which all life has hopelessly ceased and become extinct. All has utterly
+disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's couplets,
+
+  "Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,
+  Nor glass can reach--from zoophyte to man."
+
+All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many
+immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science,
+except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe,
+resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent
+clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian
+whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream,
+which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun
+extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless,
+and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+
+Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it!
+Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers,
+and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a
+_credo_ only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable
+the simple faith of the star-led Magi, who
+
+  "Deeming the light that in the east was seen
+       An earnest and a prophecy of rest
+     To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"
+
+came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to
+the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+
+[1]: It may be proper, however, to state that the tenth and concluding
+     chapter was originally written as a lecture, and delivered about a
+     year ago in New Haven, Boston, and at other points. A request for its
+     publication has induced the author to place it in this volume, with
+     the portion referring to the Bible genesis omitted. It will be found
+     germane to the general subject.
+
+[2]: "Without this latent presence of the 'I am,' all modes of existence
+     in the external world flit before us as colored shadows, with no
+     greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of a rock hath in the
+     gliding stream, or the rainbow on the fast-sailing rain
+     storm."--_Coleridge's_ "_Comments on Essays_."
+
+[3]: And science that is not purely inductive--i.e. primarily based on
+     the inviolability of our intuitions--is no science at all, but the
+     sheerest possible speculation.
+
+[4]: This presence of an active living principle in nature, one originally
+     assigned as the "_divina particula auræ_" of every living thing, is
+     frequently referred to in the higher inspirational moods of our
+     poets. Wordsworth exquisitely refers to it in the following lines of
+     his "Excursion:"--
+
+       "To every form of being is assigned
+       An _active_ principle: howe'er removed
+       From sense and observation, it subsists
+       In all things, in all nature, in the stars
+       Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds;
+       In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
+       That paves the brooks."
+
+[5]: The existence of vital units is conceded by some of the staunchest
+     materialists, such as Herbert Spencer, Professor Bastian and others.
+     Professor Bastian says: "The countless myriads of living units which
+     have been evolved in different ages of the world's history, must, in
+     each period, have given rise to innumerable multitudes of what have
+     been called 'trees of life.'" He insists, however, that they have
+     been "evolved" from something, or by some unknown process. But we
+     shall show further on that a "unit" can neither be _evolved_ nor
+     _involved_, and that this is as true of vital units as of the
+     mathematical or chemical unit. Neither evolution nor involution will
+     ever effect the value of a unit.
+
+[6]: According to Aristotle, the great world-_ordainer_ is the constant
+     world-_sustainer_.
+
+[7]: The definition which Professor Robinson, in his Lexicon of the New
+     Testament, gives of the word σπέρμα, as connected with the "divine
+     life," entirely harmonizes with this view of the subject. He says: Trop.
+     I John 3, 9, πἃς ό γεγενημένος ἐκ του ϑεου σπέρμα ἀυτον (ϑεὄν) εν ᾶντῶ
+     πενεὶ _i.e._ the germ or principle of divine life through which he
+     is begotten of god, το πνεὒμα.
+
+[8]: Professor Schmidt, of the University of Strasburg, who insists that
+     species are only relatively stable, admits that they remain
+     persistent as long as they exist under the same external conditions.
+     Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species. Nor are
+     environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions
+     results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of
+     conditions results in their appearance.
+
+[9]: Says M. Ch. Bonnet, in his "La Palingéuésie Philosophique;" "Il est
+     de la plus parfaite évidence que la matiere est susceptible d'une
+     infinité de mouvemens divers, et de modifications diverses," and this
+     is the universal claim of the materialists.
+
+[10]: Professor Burdach (as trad, par Jourdan), in speaking of the
+      productive power of nature, says, "Limitée quant á l' étendue de ses
+      manifestations, elle continue toujottrs d' agir pour la conservation
+      de ce qui a été créé, et, quoiqu' elle ne maintenue les formes
+      organiques supérieures que par la seule propagation, il ne répugne
+      point au bon sens de penser qu' aujourd' hui encore elle a la
+      puissance de produire les formes inférieures avec des eléments
+      hétérogénes, comme elle a créé originairement tout ce qui posséde l'
+      organisation." This shows that its author believed in the
+      possibility of the "superior organic forms," like the mastodon,
+      megatherium, etc. from the "heterogenetic elements"--those
+      undergoing every conceivable change--as well as the "inferior
+      forms." At all events, it is a legitimate induction from
+      materialistic premises.
+
+[11]: This point is conclusively made by Professor Burdach, who says (we
+      quote from Jourdan); "La tendance interieure á la configuration
+      existe avant sa manifestation." And by his _tendance interieure_ he
+      must mean some vital or other law, equivalent to an _entia_ in
+      matter, which results _in_, not _from_ manifestation.
+
+[12]: Goethe borrowed his idea of an archetypal world from Plato and the
+      Eleatic school. They held that the world was originated, and not
+      eternal; that it was framed by the Creator after a perfect
+      archetype, one eternally existing in the divine mind, if not an
+      actual soul-world of which our own is but the reflex.
+
+[13]: In a note to Prof. Bastian's "Beginnings of Life" (vol II. p. 537)
+      an important fact is mentioned as obtained from the writings of Dr.
+      Schneider, to wit, that _Nematoids_ (microscopical forms) may be
+      "obtained at will," almost as readily as mushrooms, by a process
+      entirely independent of spores. For instance, small pieces of beef
+      were carefully examined to see if they contained any of the ova of
+      Nematoids, and, finding none, they were buried in a small quantity
+      of earth (also carefully examined for the presence of Nematoids or
+      their ova) in a gallipot. "After three weeks," says Prof. B. "this
+      earth was found to be absolutely swarming with two kinds of
+      Nematoids--quite different from any forms which I had previously,
+      seen, although I had been seeking them for more than two years
+      previously in all sorts of situations." The reason why he had not
+      found them previously, was because the "necessary conditions" for
+      their appearance had not been obtained by him, or he had not sought
+      for them in their proper environment. They were not produced "at
+      will," but were the natural outgrowth of conditions, as much so as
+      the spores of fungi, which make their appearance whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions exist. According to Dr.
+      Gros, it takes about three weeks for these Nematoid forms to develop
+      into a reproductive state.
+
+[14]: The necessity of turning plants and animals into "tramps" is just as
+      great in the case of "Evolution" as in that of "specific creation in
+      pairs." In both cases, we must insist upon geneological
+      consanguinity. For the chances of any two highly specialized forms,
+      originally starting on different lines of divergence, and ultimately
+      reaching individual identity, both in form and characteristics, is
+      an impossible problem in the determination of chances. Consequently,
+      Mr. Darwin finds the necessity of accounting for the presence of
+      northern forms in the southern hemisphere, and the reverse, just as
+      great as in the Linnæan theory, which was fully accepted by Cuvier.
+
+[15]: Burdach, in his "_Traité Physiologie" (Trad. par Jourdan_. 1837)
+      says: "Effectivement nous rencontrons des traces de vie dans toute
+      existence quelconque." This is as broad a panspermic statement as
+      can be made, and is only true of inorganic matter so far as
+      vegetable life is concerned, including such infusorial, mycologic,
+      and cryptogamic forms as may lie so near to the "force vegetative"
+      of Needham as to be indistinguishable from it.
+
+[16]: In the case of volcanic islands, the upheavals were undoubtedly
+      accompanied by deposits of mud, sand (ocean detritus), marine
+      vegetation, and more or less animal matter, and these organic
+      substances were washed down by the rains into the broken valleys and
+      plains below, when land vegetation almost immediately made its
+      appearance; not because seeds may have drifted thither by any of the
+      different agencies that have been mentioned, but because organic
+      matter can no more help bringing forth life in some form, when
+      conditions favor, than salt water, when exposed to evaporation, can
+      help crystallizing into its symmetrically-arranged salts. And the
+      same would be true of all the coral islands, bringing up the organic
+      matter of the sea to the influence of the light, the rains, and the
+      dews. The islands thus formed in the Pacific Ocean begin to exhibit
+      vegetable life almost as soon as they make their appearance above
+      the reefs, and a line of sea-beach is formed about them.
+
+[17]: These, while presenting the most varied and diverse forms of
+      infusorial life, are nevertheless the most constant and abundant
+      type. They abound more or less in all organic infusions. Ehrenberg,
+      however, holds that they are no more animal than vegetal forms. They
+      vary in length from 1/15000 to 1/2000 of an inch, and are
+      consequently too minute to be satisfactorily classified in respect
+      to all their diversified characteristics.
+
+[18]: The extent of the southern ice-cap may at least be approximately
+      reached from explorations already made. Capt. Weddell, in 1823,
+      extended his explorations southward to within about 15° of the
+      south pole, where he found an open sea. Capt. Ross, in 1842,
+      approached to within about 13° of the same pole, without serious
+      obstruction. It is true that, in the following year, he encountered
+      ice barriers near the line of the antarctic circle, but they were
+      floating barriers coming down from Weddell's open sea. Capt.
+      Wilkes, in 1840, explored a considerable portion of the Antarctic
+      Continent, lying almost entirely within the antarctic circle. Other
+      explorations have been made, showing that the southern ice-cap does
+      not probably extend, continuously at least, much farther north than
+      78° or 80°, or to within some ten or twelve degrees of the south
+      pole, independently of the packs of drifting ice in the otherwise
+      open seas.
+
+[19]: The truth or falsity of "Evolution" depends entirely on the
+      successful solution of this problem, for the chances are
+      quintillions to ones that no two identical forms could have
+      originated from different centres, or from the same centre on
+      divergent lines, and ever reached identically the same results. And
+      how any two forms should happen to be sexually paired, on the same
+      or different lines of divergence, is one of those inexplicable
+      mysteries which must puzzle Herbert Spencer in all his labyrinthian
+      searches into "Force-correlation," "Differentiation," "the Dynamic
+      Force of Molecules," etc., etc. However successful he may be in
+      other directions, he will inevitably fail in this. We must fall back
+      on the grand Old Bible genesis for the solution of this difficulty,
+      where every living thing was commanded to produce seed, or multiply
+      and replenish the waters and the earth with offspring.
+
+[20]: These transcendental or ideal forms may be said to correspond to the
+      "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are the eternal, immutable
+      principles which are discernible to the eye of the soul, as the
+      sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of the
+      body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a
+      higher realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of
+      which the objective reality is but the shadow.
+
+[21]: Herbert Spencer may be quoted as authority on this point. He says:
+      "There is invariably, and necessarily, a conformity between the
+      vital functions of any organism, and the _conditions_ in which it is
+      placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a certain range
+      of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation."
+      And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora, each
+      specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north
+      or south from the thermal equator.
+
+[22]: Speaking of the ultimate principles or elements of matter, Plato is
+      quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with modest diffidence, "God alone,
+      and those whom he loves among men, know what they are." It is only
+      those who seek to eliminate God from the universe that speak with
+      confident flippancy on the subject of molecular machinery and
+      force-correlations.
+
+[23]: As long as the evolutionists cannot agree among themselves as to
+      what constitutes the process of evolution, it can hardly be expected
+      that the public will accept their speculations as conclusive
+      inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to the
+      doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many
+      objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word
+      Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."
+
+[24]: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of
+      God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.
+
+[25]: Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the "Protoplasmic Theory of Life,"
+      says: "Matter cannot change its state of motion or rest without the
+      influence of some force from without. True spontaneity of movement
+      is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what we call dead
+      matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an exciting
+      cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial
+      impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this
+      "force from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle
+      operating to effect the otherwise impossible change in matter.
+
+[26]: A favorite set-phrase of Professor Bastian in speaking of
+      morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes calls them.
+
+[27]: That great and justly celebrated naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of
+      the universal origination of the lower forms of animal life by a
+      process termed, in his time, "spontaneous generation," says: "There
+      are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal and vegetable,
+      which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'molécules
+      organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a
+      constant succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for
+      some time associated with the Abbé Needham in his experiments in
+      vital directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by
+      no means certain that he did not accept the Abbé's "force
+      végétative" in place of his more materialistic views respecting
+      "molécules organiques." At all events, his statement that as many
+      living things appear in nature independently of reproducing causes
+      as by successive generation, is no doubt true.
+
+[28]: M. Tréviranus, who followed Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask
+      experimentations, first noticed the important fact that the
+      animalculæ appearing in different organic infusions, depended on
+      the nature and quality of the infusions themselves, and that the
+      changed conditions of the same infusion produced new and independent
+      forms of life.
+
+[29]: Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet, says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin
+      étoit la religion éternelle des Essences; parce que tout ce qui
+      existe existoit comme de toute éternité comme possible ou en idée
+      dans l'entendement de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette vérité sublime en
+      d'autres termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute Eternité
+      dans l'entendement du Suprême Architecte. Tou tes les parties de
+      l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome étoient deffinés dans ce plan.
+      Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux différentes pieces de
+      ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs représentations. Chaque etre y
+      étoit figuré par ses characteres propres: et l'acte par lequel la
+      Souveraine Puissance a réalisé ce plan, est ce que nous nommons la
+      Création."
+
+[30]: Here is a fact given us by Dr. F. Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a
+      peat meadow in that town, owned by him, which was at no time subject
+      to overflow, a large quantity of peat had been removed at different
+      intervals of time, when the excavations naturally filled with water.
+      In these excavations there appeared not only the _Cyprinidae_ in
+      considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which grew to be as
+      large as those in the most favored streams. They made their
+      appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and
+      have flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow
+      were there any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any
+      other source of water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.
+
+[31]: Professor Beale, in one of his very latest works says: "Of the
+      chemical and physical forms of energy something is known, but of
+      the relationship of the so called _vital_ energy, nothing has
+      been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is
+      altogether different from that which has been traced to physical
+      and chemical energy."
+
+[32]: It is admitted, even in the case of _Bacteria_, whose movements are
+      the most uniform, that they are sometimes so inert and languid as to
+      show no movements at all; while, at other times, they exhibit mere
+      Brownian movements or those no more nearly allied to "life" than the
+      minute particles of carbon escaping from the flame of a kerosene
+      lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists, it is a
+      question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most
+      active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in
+      other words, whether they are _Fungus-spores_ or _Torula_-cells, or
+      whether they may not be some intermediate forms.
+
+[33]: The difficulty of assigning any definitional value to a "primordial
+      germ" is due to the vagueness of idea attached to it in the popular
+      mind, as well as to the diversified theories and speculations of the
+      scientists concerning the origin of life. We can only define it as a
+      "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest conceivable
+      quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical unit."
+
+[34]: Let two comrades be shot at the same instant in battle, the one
+      through the heart, and the other through the arm, shattering it
+      badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from taking a piece of
+      bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart and instantly
+      killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still living?
+      Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He
+      may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts
+      might still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the
+      integrity of the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply
+      because the vital principle that differentiates matter is gone--can
+      no longer act. If the integrity of the bone depended on the action
+      of the molecules, and not on the vital principle, there is no reason
+      why this experiment should not be a success. For the molecules are
+      all there, and their action will not be disturbed for hours after
+      the death of the man shot through the heart.
+
+[35]: It is safe to adhere to the Leibnitzian axiom, _Natura non agit
+      saltatim_.
+
+[36]: One of the most cultured classes of Christian believers in our day,
+      holds that "all life is from the Lord;" that "He is the fountain,
+      and we only the streams thence." And this, they claim, is true of
+      all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to cut off this
+      stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the fountain
+      of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause a
+      mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their
+      intermediates.
+
+[37]: Professor Marsh, of Yale College, has predicted that the "missing
+      link" will be found in Borneo--evidently not crediting Mr. Stanley's
+      statement about its presence in the interior of Africa. But one
+      "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an extensive
+      family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest
+      genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half
+      cover the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey
+      and the man being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the
+      first half of the chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions
+      of links, so to speak. How, then, is the greater length of the
+      plexus to be covered by a single "missing link?" A long line of
+      caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore, in Borneo, and shipped to
+      the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous stretch in the chain of
+      animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for. Borneo must be
+      exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the chasm
+      between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal
+      inhabitants, of that island.
+
+[38]: This daring hypothesis of the materialists is so utterly repugnant
+      to all our ideas of a perfected Cosmos, that we have no patience
+      with those advancing it. It is, at best, speculation run mad, and is
+      based on no other assumption than that of the inherent
+      imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God, or
+      from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast
+      geognostic epochs.
+
+      From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility
+      inevitably runs into the _reductio ad absurdum_. For if, in the play
+      of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past
+      time has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting
+      movements and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite
+      duration of time to come can effect nothing but similarly mutual
+      adjustments and re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an
+      infinity of time, space, matter and motion, everywhere presenting a
+      unity of phenomena in the universe, "there can never be anything,"
+      according to the great Stagirite, "unconnected or out of place, as
+      in a bad tragedy." Conservation must, therefore, be the rule, and
+      desinence the impossible exception.
+
+      But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact
+      of vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly
+      appeared, and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as
+      suddenly disappeared, to show that there are mighty disturbances in
+      the sidereal heavens which entirely negative the idea of
+      "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the phenomena of variable
+      stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and
+      fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and
+      well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of
+      extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of
+      Tycho Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the
+      interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty
+      non-luminous or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their
+      respective centres of light and heat, as the attending planets
+      revolve about the common centre of gravity in our own system. And
+      this is especially true of that vast and fathomless star-stratum,
+      called the Milky-way, in which most of these peculiar phenomena
+      occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.
+
+      That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable
+      transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no
+      matter of wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising
+      that these sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater
+      frequency. This would inevitably be the case if the planes of
+      revolution, in the case of these non-luminous bodies about their
+      central orbs, were coincident with the lines of vision from our own
+      planet--a circumstance by no means improbable from the vastness of
+      the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of stars marching
+      therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be accounted for
+      in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their apparent
+      rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our
+      sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation
+      Hercules at the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of
+      Arcturus' flight), it is impossible to determine, in the present
+      state of astronomical knowledge, whether the apparent change of
+      place in any star is real or merely optical. But, in the case of
+      double stars, each is travelling (independently of its other
+      motions) about the common centre of gravity obtaining in its own
+      system, and these relative movements may account for the greater or
+      less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one, present a
+      greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.
+
+      The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus
+      destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified
+      in our own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With
+      stupendous planetary systems revolving about each of these
+      apparently double stars, they must respectively have a revolution,
+      real as well as apparent, about their own centres of gravity--not
+      one and the same centre, but different and far distant centres.
+      Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with planes of movement at
+      right angles with it, they would necessarily present the appearance
+      of one star revolving about the other--an _apparent_ motion only.
+
+      And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of
+      _temporary_ stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens,
+      flaming up into stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and
+      then disappearing altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or
+      _apparent_ stars, was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its
+      maximum brilliancy at the very first, but gradually diminishing in
+      size until the end of seventeen months, when it disappeared, without
+      change of place, from the heavens. This temporary star was visible
+      in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the Milky-way, within whose swarm of
+      stellar worlds most of these apparent stars have made their
+      appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for this stellar
+      phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed and
+      molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the
+      elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses
+      (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation
+      of "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is
+      manifestly too absurd for scientific recognition. A more
+      satisfactory explanation may be here suggested:--Supposing the
+      apparent relative position of any six or seven stars of the sixth
+      magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed by the combined
+      motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as to throw
+      them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered together
+      as to show their several star-discs as one, we should unquestionably
+      have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as long as
+      this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after
+      another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the
+      combined motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from
+      the first to the second magnitude, and so on until it reached the
+      sixth magnitude, when it would pass beyond the reach of unaided
+      human vision. But as the star of Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at
+      its fullest brilliancy, it may be objected that this suggested
+      theory fails to meet the required conditions.
+
+      As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the
+      Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction
+      of stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a
+      century. We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded
+      stars, in great numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that
+      these temporary stars almost uniformly appear in that zone renders
+      the suggestion here made quite as rational, in the way of
+      speculation at least, as that of "vapory celestial matter" suddenly
+      condensed into a star of the first magnitude, as Sir. William
+      Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not probable.
+
+      Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of
+      stars, lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various
+      parts of the heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance
+      of a star of the fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if
+      more thickly clustered, present that of a star of the first
+      magnitude. But powerful telescopes resolve them into a large number
+      of stars, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth magnitude. One such
+      cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been resolved into not less than
+      fifteen hundred small stars of very low magnitude, and pretty widely
+      scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander Von Humboldt, in
+      speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that "their
+      disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any
+      diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces
+      or in their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too
+      weak too excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no
+      longer see is not necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same
+      time the question of Pliny--"_Stellæ an obirent nascerenturve?_"
+
+      But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of
+      these stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There
+      are, for instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant
+      clusters of stars, dark granular spots, of greater or less
+      magnitude, in which the most powerful telescopes show no glints or
+      traces of stars. They are among Humboldt's smaller "fissures or
+      chasms in the heavens," in which he asserts that there is a great
+      paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if one of these thick stellar
+      clusters, which show to the naked eye as a single star, should, by
+      the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system and the stellar
+      group in question, pass into the field of one of these small rents
+      or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of the
+      stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the
+      first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that
+      magnitude so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or
+      fissure. It would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in
+      the clouds of a dark night, and disappear as soon as it had
+      traversed, or apparently traversed, the rift in question. This
+      galactic curtain, it should be borne in mind, is made up of
+      18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less than 720,000,000
+      dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of
+      gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this is
+      unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of
+      the more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch,
+      even in the telescopic field, mere glints of light as the
+      intervening swarms of stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the
+      foreground and shut out the more distant view. It is only through
+      these rents and fissures in this great galactic curtain that the
+      brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever be seen; and these glints
+      of far distant light, showing dimly through this curtain, may
+      account for the peculiar _milky_ appearance of the galaxy, arising
+      from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams themselves. It
+      was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic curtain
+      that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its
+      appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained
+      visible for a period of seventeen months.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+  
+    h1,h2,h3,h4 { text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-variant: small-caps }
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life: Its True Genesis, by R. W. Wright
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Life: Its True Genesis
+
+Author: R. W. Wright
+
+Posting Date: August 24, 2014 [EBook #9307]
+Release Date: November, 2005
+First Posted: September 19, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE: ITS TRUE GENESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <h1>
+      Life: Its True Genesis
+    </h1>
+    <h2 style="margin-top: .5em">
+      By R. W. Wright
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &Omicron;ὗ &tau;ὸ &sigma;&pi;έ&rho;&mu;&alpha; &alpha;ὐ&tau;&omicron;ῦ ἐ&nu;
+      &alpha;ὐ&tau;ῷ &chi;&alpha;&tau;ὰ &gamma;έ&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf; ἐ&pi;ὶ
+      &tau;ῆ&sigmaf; &gamma;ῆ&sigmaf;. [Septuagint.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is
+      upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Second Edition
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      1884
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED<br /> TO<br /> ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.<br /> OF
+      CHESHIRE, CONN.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#pref">Prefatory</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chapter I. <a href="#01">Introductory.</a><br /> Chapter II. <a href="#02">Life--Its
+      True Genesis.</a><br /> Chapter III. <a href="#03">Alternations of Forest
+      Growths.</a><br /> Chapter IV. <a href="#04">The Distribution and Vitality
+      of Seeds.</a><br /> Chapter V. <a href="#05">Plant Migration and
+      Interglacial Periods.</a><br /> Chapter VI. <a href="#06">Distribution and
+      Permanence of Species.</a><br /> Chapter VII. <a href="#07">What Is Life?
+      Its Various Theories.</a><br /> Chapter VIII. <a href="#08">Materialistic
+      Theories of Life Refuted.</a><br /> Chapter IX. <a href="#09">Force-Correlation,
+      Differentiation and Other Life Theories.</a><br /> Chapter X. <a href="#10">Darwinism
+      Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.</a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Preface to Second Edition.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in
+      that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that
+      thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or
+      spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This
+      is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of
+      the tenth verse:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not
+      thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (<i>the earth</i>) bring
+      forth and bud (<i>not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth</i>),
+      that it (<i>the earth</i>) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the
+      eater (<i>man being the only sower of seed and eater of bread</i>): so
+      shall my Word be (<i>the Word of Life</i>) that goeth forth out of my
+      mouth (<i>the mouth of the Lord</i>); it shall not return unto me void (<i>i.e.,
+      lifeless</i>), but it shall accomplish that which I (<i>the Lord Jehovah</i>)
+      please, and it (<i>the living Word</i>) shall prosper in the thing whereto
+      I sent it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six
+      hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet,
+      and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall
+      come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle
+      tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that
+      shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come
+      and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command,
+      "Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of
+      nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the
+      conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence
+      by the divine fiat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on
+      this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of
+      Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in
+      history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such
+      volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a
+      flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but
+      on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree,
+      and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as
+      vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon
+      as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and
+      the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative.
+      There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than
+      in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most
+      remarkable formula is taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics,"
+      as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature"
+      instead of God, in their philosophical writings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after <i>Truth</i> as it is
+      to be found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the
+      temple of science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful
+      consideration. It is only when they become dogmatic, and assert
+      propositions that have no foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe,
+      that we propose to break a lance at their expense, and lay bare their
+      fallacies. We claim nothing more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than
+      we are willing and ready to accord to them. Indeed, we would champion
+      their right to be heard sooner than we would our own, on the principle
+      that it is our duty to be just to others before we are generous to
+      ourselves, or those of our own following. But our Agnostic friends should
+      remember that when they charge us with being "dogmatic in science," the
+      charge should be made good from a scientific stand-point, and not merely
+      by the bandying of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million
+      years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground,
+      we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist
+      for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they
+      have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where
+      they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends
+      referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error.
+      Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from
+      the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these
+      toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all
+      life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life
+      ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of
+      nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other
+      forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live
+      without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform
+      to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and
+      food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a
+      dead batrachian inside of one year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality
+      between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science
+      finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this
+      riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim
+      there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let
+      the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth
+      these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon
+      any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike
+      Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832,
+      and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest
+      boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large
+      force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the
+      characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales,
+      sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by
+      the road-sides, and the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> scraped into the centre of
+      the road-beds; the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through
+      these wayside rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of
+      oxen to break the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates,
+      shists, sandstones etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more
+      than half an inch in length, were turned out at different seasons of the
+      year, showing that they were produced independently of any parent
+      batrachian, there being no trace of a mother toad in connection with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
+      early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
+      propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
+      they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
+      any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
+      circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
+      in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
+      appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
+      is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
+      by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
+      made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
+      Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
+      sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
+      taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
+      the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
+      almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
+      inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
+      the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
+      where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.
+      It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion
+      of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source
+      of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout
+      in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn
+      he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that
+      expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and
+      on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his
+      enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout,
+      not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the
+      blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing
+      out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common <i>Rana</i>
+      family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in
+      similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the
+      reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been
+      apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet into
+      the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water secured.
+      We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as well as at
+      some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they wanted,
+      remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog, originating
+      therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would make his way
+      to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well enough as one
+      of the <i>Rana</i> family. It was only to our more intelligent neighbors
+      (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we stopped to
+      explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it appears,
+      whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are equally
+      conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water from our
+      cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm sun and air,
+      and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting. The barrel left
+      open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing their little rafts of
+      eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young wigglers that in the
+      course of a week or two made their appearance in the open barrel in
+      immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch out into
+      mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest study, as well
+      as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the proper time they
+      come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable modification in their
+      structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the tormenting little
+      insects that they are during the summer and autumn months in our Northern
+      climate. The object of the covered barrel was to ascertain whether we
+      could reach the conditions favorable for the development of this little
+      pest of the <i>Culex</i> family, independently of the eggs of the insect
+      itself. This required some patience and not a little care. We knew that an
+      egg dropped through the interstices of the netting would sink to the
+      bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as every scientist
+      understanding the process well knows. It must be floated on the water at
+      first, or until it reaches the point of development into a wiggler. The
+      first step in the process of its life is as cunningly devised as the
+      second, and the second as the third, until the full-fledged mosquito is
+      reached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the
+      experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our
+      demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the
+      covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of
+      harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the
+      water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of
+      their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable
+      world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and
+      we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by
+      Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished
+      in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an
+      acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of
+      the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a
+      convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than
+      ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he
+      may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and,
+      for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this
+      question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy
+      now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof.
+      Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show
+      that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we
+      have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our
+      mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from
+      little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and
+      knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk
+      about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds,"
+      especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain
+      knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned
+      Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with
+      the same becoming courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled
+      "Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a
+      more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any
+      other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in
+      the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so
+      conspicuously in the historic page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young
+      frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was
+      operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with
+      us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these
+      batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our
+      highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose
+      that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the
+      earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all
+      vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did
+      in the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that
+      scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms
+      have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence
+      diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific
+      centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the
+      environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like
+      living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and
+      thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as
+      their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in
+      pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict
+      went forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of
+      life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India
+      Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural <i>habitat</i>
+      of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster
+      climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the extreme limbs
+      of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an
+      error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the common impression
+      that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller mango-trees growing about
+      the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish, as we have said, a natural
+      <i>habitat</i> for the oyster, and as the salt sea-spray washes their
+      roots and the bark of their trunks, the long thin-shelled oysters of that
+      region make their appearance thereon without the presence of spawn, just
+      as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped along our sand-banks in New
+      England. On these dumped shells oysters will be produced abundantly,
+      simply because the conditions are favorable, and not in consequence of the
+      presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any, locomotive power, and can
+      no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale the cliffs of the Azores.
+      The reason why they hang in pendent clusters from the extreme boughs of
+      the mango in the West India Islands is, that these boughs are sprayed upon
+      by the rippling waters, and the environing conditions being favorable, the
+      indifferent oyster of that region makes its appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
+      another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
+      from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
+      nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
+      the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
+      appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
+      previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
+      than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
+      bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
+      will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
+      not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a
+      dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt
+      of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that
+      acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of
+      out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May
+      and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those
+      months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is
+      specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the
+      University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished
+      for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent
+      as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to
+      the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in
+      the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications
+      in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier
+      periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend
+      strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical
+      text; as, for instance, the <i>Trilobites</i>, occurring so abundantly in
+      what is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their
+      appearance, whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this
+      fossil, characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not
+      so much in time and place as in extended localities and
+      conditions--indicating the presence of a law of life such as we have
+      enunciated. We once inquired of the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took
+      for the formation of one of these periods or systems? His reply was curt
+      and pertinent: "It took long enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the
+      time, and we have never asked the question since. It is prying beyond
+      scientific depth, and the ablest scholars in the world will so regard it
+      in the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been
+      governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "<i>similia
+      similibus gignuntur</i>"--similar conditions producing similar
+      forms--obtains universally. The <i>Graptolites</i>, occurring in the
+      bituminous shales of the Silurian sandstone period, afford only another
+      instance of the same law to which we have called the attention of our
+      readers. In fact, the annals of natural history abound in the most
+      conclusive proofs, as well in the fossilized as the living world, of what
+      the paramount text of the Bible teaches us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of
+      minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the
+      Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible
+      rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a
+      great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the
+      induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom,
+      he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun
+      several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will
+      be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True
+      Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less
+      than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally
+      true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had
+      spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our
+      command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation
+      of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and
+      study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as
+      every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense
+      amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his
+      paper on the <i>Arch&aelig;opterix</i>, rescued from the lithographic
+      slate, is a case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of
+      accomplishing a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the
+      paper was trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so
+      with every one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to
+      attain success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if
+      not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we
+      have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for
+      the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological
+      strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings
+      upon the Matterhorn!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says
+      be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in
+      the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power
+      of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at
+      least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to
+      themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power
+      that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and
+      the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other
+      mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the
+      "Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of
+      the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that
+      period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in
+      physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were
+      expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our
+      materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while,
+      and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it
+      took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data
+      we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in
+      which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at
+      least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or
+      defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?
+      Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted
+      English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and
+      pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When
+      Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering
+      Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the
+      other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the
+      twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent
+      events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to
+      place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow,"
+      unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps,
+      is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it
+      appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r,
+      of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation
+      of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other
+      institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both
+      know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first
+      command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation,
+      not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles
+      of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or
+      power of life in matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth
+      their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now
+      asserts they originally came from.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts
+      thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and
+      earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis
+      changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine
+      energy intervene!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after
+      our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the
+      material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into
+      his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is
+      the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no
+      word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited
+      sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander
+      purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the
+      light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances
+      with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this
+      millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between
+      the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge
+      over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass
+      it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It
+      takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him
+      where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his
+      higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material
+      dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.
+      Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly
+      Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead
+      of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.
+      We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and
+      conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career
+      for good or for evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of
+      our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so
+      doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant
+      at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to <i>The
+      National Quarterly Review</i>, for the captious manner in which it treated
+      us after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its
+      two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by
+      a class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error
+      and enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of
+      criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never
+      thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put
+      several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist
+      had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously
+      as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had
+      handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural
+      science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics,
+      materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare
+      the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive
+      adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not
+      so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other
+      respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were
+      content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the
+      fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the
+      waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests
+      of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first
+      and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive
+      Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained
+      by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of
+      unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism
+      demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic,"
+      was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the
+      writer's own face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged
+      in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently
+      indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to
+      our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as <i>The National
+      Quarterly Review</i> speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate
+      friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it;
+      if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter
+      for them to regret, and for us to deplore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our
+      thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in
+      what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our
+      thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,<br /> Like wayside
+        flowers that lift their heads, aglow<br /> With a far sweeter fragrance
+        when they've been<br /> All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,<br /> Than
+        when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain<br /> The long night through,
+        and wake at early dawn<br /> To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      R. W. Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      West Cheshier, Conn., <i>Oct</i>. 12, 1883.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="pref" id="pref"></a>Prefatory.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the
+      public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal
+      introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work
+      may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of
+      salutation untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has
+      traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous
+      and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less
+      conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: <i>That
+      the primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living
+      things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that
+      they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions exist</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in
+      the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in
+      the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament.
+      The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of
+      Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true
+      Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the
+      biblical and scientific scholar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show
+      that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception
+      named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that
+      we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more
+      imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall
+      into the same lines of incidence in human thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Science has long taught that the <i>absence</i> of necessary physiological
+      conditions results everywhere in the <i>disappearance</i> of vital
+      phenomena; by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the <i>presence</i>
+      of these necessary conditions results everywhere in the <i>appearance</i>
+      of vital phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe,
+      where it is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak,
+      after each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many
+      thousand years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the
+      pine paved the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the
+      beech. Neither sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the
+      fittest" have anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of
+      either. Each yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal
+      principle of life) was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the
+      earth, and made its appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the
+      presence of natural seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions
+      favored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in
+      the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak
+      forests where pine have been cleared away, and <i>vice versa</i>, in some
+      parts of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled.
+      So with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes,
+      over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last
+      glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will
+      find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance
+      without the possible intervention of natural seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the
+      Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred
+      years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was
+      undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third
+      century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch
+      roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before
+      them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time
+      of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to
+      the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel
+      points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now
+      subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Iren&aelig;us, this Greek version was rendered at the request
+      of Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian
+      library, and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and
+      Hellenistic scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that
+      day,--employed upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount
+      authority to our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the
+      highest and most conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and
+      the "new genesis of life" we derive therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &Sigma;&pi;έ&rho;&mu;&alpha; (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost
+      an identical signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "<i>germ</i>
+      of anything," or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in
+      anything that lives or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its
+      literal sense of "seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was
+      issued, there was no plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon
+      the earth from which seed could have been derived. The word was used in
+      its larger and more comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the
+      "germinal principle of life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which
+      the Greek stoics used it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and
+      Diogenes use the terms &sigma;&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&alpha;&tau;´&kappa;&omicron;ὶ
+      &gamma;ό&gamma;&omicron;&iota; expressing "the <i>laws of generation
+      contained in matter</i>"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its
+      textual connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows:
+      "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the
+      fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, <i>whose germinal principle of
+      life, each in itself after its kind, is upon the earth</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
+      complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
+      scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
+      Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
+      The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
+      rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
+      development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
+      do with the '<i>odium theologicum</i>?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury
+      both theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
+      agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
+      scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
+      nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
+      the Hebrew <i>Hagiographa</i>, of what less value is it to science than if
+      it had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the
+      inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to
+      science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr.
+      Herbert Spencer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with
+      all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no
+      longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every
+      operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific
+      speculation to pry. We know what nature <i>does</i>, or may know it by the
+      proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more
+      than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at
+      the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis,
+      science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine,
+      without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down
+      an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood
+      tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to
+      land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth
+      bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day
+      as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of
+      endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It
+      requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the
+      oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from
+      primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal
+      organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian
+      gemmule, thousands of years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a
+      thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as
+      our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified
+      theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest,
+      rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery,
+      transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates,
+      <i>mol&eacute;cules organiques</i>, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated
+      "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formul&aelig;,
+      with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen
+      or twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific
+      speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true
+      and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter,
+      motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to
+      the public. [<a href="#foot1">1</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R. W. Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      West Cheshire, Conn.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      True Genesis.
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="01"></a>Chapter I.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Introductory.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and
+      speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly
+      tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that
+      utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical
+      conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally
+      prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the
+      current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal
+      rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our
+      more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and
+      speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations
+      have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material
+      substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly
+      persistent elements in the universe--<i>Matter</i> and <i>Motion</i>.
+      Everything else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or
+      else essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their
+      theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the
+      two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate
+      conclusions respecting matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force,
+      and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they
+      claim, of one and the same force in the universe--<i>Motion</i>, With the
+      exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring,
+      ever active and reactive agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism
+      more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes
+      or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere
+      postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force
+      of molecules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories.
+      Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has
+      unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last
+      stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a
+      special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the
+      transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does
+      exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of
+      its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction,
+      because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally
+      averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly
+      speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are
+      among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the
+      last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and
+      who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that
+      the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now,
+      as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and
+      ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of
+      the London University College. Had he spent less time over this
+      dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of
+      life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not
+      mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation
+      of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a
+      non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at
+      the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the
+      beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs?
+      or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of
+      all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, <i>de
+      novo</i>? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he
+      hardly allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as
+      applied to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as
+      terms to provoke both incredulity and derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past
+      professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services
+      as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the
+      most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces
+      of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls,
+      and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's
+      enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and
+      laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and
+      putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another;
+      cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one
+      dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and
+      mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle
+      the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in
+      nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say
+      nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more
+      conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any
+      greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting
+      either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their
+      logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that
+      only a negative conclusion shall follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life is neither matter nor motion,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore: Life is not indestructible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the
+      distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the
+      incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that
+      neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment,
+      thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more
+      illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say
+      that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe,
+      without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to
+      embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either
+      have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence
+      to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of
+      such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be
+      realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows
+      that this conscious <i>ego</i>--this thing that conceives, thinks,
+      ascribes attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates
+      it in the order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the
+      argument--we are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to
+      the theological conception of a God--the one supreme <i>Ego</i> of the
+      universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as
+      apprehensive intelligence, is derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the
+      order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are
+      constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent
+      inductions:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Cause must exist before effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Without some vital principle, therefore, pre&euml;xisting as a cause,
+      there can be no life-manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as
+      an effect?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself
+      both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an
+      incongruent and conflictive judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized,
+      whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. Hence Life, either as a pre&euml;xisting cause or vital agency, must
+      precede both animal and vegetal organism. Again:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that
+      which is produced by an operating cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it
+      as an operating cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency,
+      must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating
+      cause before there is any produced effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some
+      equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there
+      be can no matter without an existing <i>ego</i>, in some state of
+      consciousness in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it
+      attributes.[<a href="#foot2">2</a>] On what, therefore, are we to
+      predicate the existence of either matter or motion, except it be these
+      intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as we have any
+      knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that "breath of
+      life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if
+      our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality. All is as
+      unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a rock," or
+      Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once defined a
+      fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The
+      "materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant
+      them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since
+      both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more
+      potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and
+      consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without
+      which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is
+      that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work,
+      with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital
+      force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding
+      God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his
+      dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his
+      crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he
+      resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly
+      syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon
+      infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he
+      successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very
+      act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as
+      conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the
+      world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however,
+      that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing
+      demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In
+      admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually
+      admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause,
+      which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the
+      laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents,
+      remain as they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the
+      disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the <i>Hagiographa</i>, or
+      "sacred writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical
+      scholar that some of the most important discoveries in modern science,
+      especially in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological
+      research and inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more
+      explicit utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy,
+      that whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of
+      battle, as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates
+      of the latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of
+      controversy and achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth
+      of this statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the
+      more important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be
+      found that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked,
+      much neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key
+      that unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now
+      waging between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe,
+      it will most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in
+      no equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published
+      volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to
+      be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific
+      value as in the first chapter of Genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful
+      translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form
+      and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not
+      only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led
+      Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent system
+      of world-structures which regards the universe as originally consisting of
+      uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence "without form and
+      void," but which subsequently became aggregated by gravitation into an
+      infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+      space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important
+      suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force
+      of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the
+      evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive
+      epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define
+      "gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused
+      matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the
+      universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into
+      man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the
+      order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis,
+      and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in
+      the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two
+      great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to
+      rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere
+      stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office
+      for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the
+      firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright
+      Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed
+      fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable
+      life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological
+      distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of
+      nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been
+      turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever
+      was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been
+      "guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of
+      this most remarkable genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in
+      which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally
+      explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature,
+      either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind,"
+      and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible
+      law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence
+      in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called,
+      would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr.
+      Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will
+      ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible
+      theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only
+      excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the
+      earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the
+      necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of
+      the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena
+      occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all
+      mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal
+      organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and
+      hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing
+      (except man) "after his kind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some
+      of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and
+      that of materialistic science:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE BIBLE GENESIS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an
+      Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is
+      no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as <i>perfect</i> of
+      its kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or
+      "germs," declared to be in themselves upon the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground,
+      every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every
+      plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the
+      field "before it grew."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to
+      bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth
+      therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open
+      firmament of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth
+      every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in
+      which they appear in geological distribution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after
+      he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of
+      every other living creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of
+      life," and he became a "living soul,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of
+      man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air,
+      the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the
+      face of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over
+      man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than
+      the angels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the
+      universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and
+      myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending
+      through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an
+      infinite duration of time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less <i>imperfect</i>
+      of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some underlying law of
+      variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual development from
+      lower into higher organisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine
+      agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all
+      its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or,
+      at best, only a sort of <i>tertium quid</i> between matter and motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles,
+      birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental
+      progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and
+      constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those
+      of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until
+      gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living
+      creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing
+      constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower
+      organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders,
+      genera, or species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible
+      respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing
+      up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms,
+      until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as
+      thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known moral
+      factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the social
+      instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree only, not
+      in kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and
+      purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its
+      adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out
+      all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly
+      indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the
+      tiger, or they dominion over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those
+      expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of
+      God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that
+      end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has
+      become endowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher
+      than the apes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred
+      Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and
+      conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical,
+      devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at
+      least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least
+      as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which
+      represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being
+      implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word
+      <i>ZRA</i>, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of
+      Genesis, from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his
+      "Critica Sacra," first published in 1662:--"<i>Sparsit, asparsit, cum
+      aspersione fudit, diffudit</i>," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered,
+      universally diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That
+      the Hebrew word <i>ZRA</i>. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of
+      a plant or tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree,
+      from which "seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the
+      earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that
+      is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the "<i>diversa
+      diversorum viventium primordia</i>" of Dr. William Harvey, were originally
+      implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and biologist, the
+      discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught the doctrine
+      expressed in his phrase "<i>omne vivum ex ovo</i>," but that of
+      "primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing
+      in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its
+      more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of
+      receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself
+      into a living organism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and
+      vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs
+      from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or
+      unit--or whether it originates <i>de novo</i>, as the materialists assert,
+      from infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide
+      particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring
+      hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is
+      certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the
+      basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that
+      indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to
+      be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational
+      hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical
+      necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital
+      effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic
+      conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or
+      trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity
+      rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the
+      materialistic dogma, <i>nihil ex nihilo</i>, would necessitate a like
+      induction wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues
+      is manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the
+      seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are
+      the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and
+      thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its
+      environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its
+      environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the
+      ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only
+      point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go
+      back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed
+      form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no
+      such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to
+      the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only,
+      but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital
+      forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix,
+      or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth
+      itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in
+      the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less
+      conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these
+      "primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or
+      whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is
+      everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its
+      new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the
+      wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal
+      point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new
+      knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital
+      theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of
+      a tiger in an Indian jungle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teach us to know what nature <i>does</i>, not what she <i>is</i>; and
+      whatever of "divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in
+      the majestic "Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses,
+      in the "myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic
+      soul of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired
+      authors themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted
+      their inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is
+      contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great
+      and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but
+      because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of
+      all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr.
+      Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular
+      machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and,
+      at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore,
+      by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we
+      will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did
+      the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive
+      assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to
+      speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the
+      molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed"
+      ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave
+      to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its
+      proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life
+      advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this
+      connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest
+      growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
+      seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
+      forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
+      domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
+      never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
+      our position, that the Bible Genesis contains <i>the true key to the
+      mystery of life</i>. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever
+      it shall be reached in human conception and formulated into
+      definitely-known processes of action, must satisfactorily explain all
+      life-manifestations, as Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the
+      movements of all celestial bodies. And the simpler the theory when once
+      formulated--the more perfectly it falls into the grooves of
+      definitely-expressed thought, and the more harmoniously it adapts itself
+      to all vital manifestations--the more conclusive must be the induction on
+      which it rests.[<a href="#foot3">3</a>] The emphatic statement that the
+      "primordial germs" of all living things are in the earth, from the lowest
+      infusorial form to the highest vital organism below "specifically-created"
+      man, when supplemented by the scientific statement that "vital units" make
+      their appearance whenever environing conditions favor, is conclusively a
+      theory which accounts for all the life-manifestations heretofore occurring
+      upon our globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
+      thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
+      there is functional activity; while a state, or <i>status</i>, is an
+      incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of
+      these--life and its <i>status</i>--there must lie some efficient cause,
+      producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the
+      functional activity dependent on organization. To assume that this
+      efficient cause is simply the effect or result of organization--one of its
+      dependent conditions--is begging the whole question, and, at the same
+      time, discarding a very important element in the problem--that of
+      conditional environment. What this efficient cause <i>is</i>, is a
+      question that awakens no responsive inquiry. It strikes its roots too
+      deeply into the intuitions of consciousness for the soul to give back an
+      intelligible reply. Certain it is that neither metaphysical speculation,
+      nor scientific inquiry, will ever enable us to reach the roots of this
+      question, or extract from them the first quantitive essence of life
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of
+      life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in
+      their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those
+      founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of
+      the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real
+      <i>animus</i> of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the
+      great central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural,
+      spiritual, eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand
+      corner-stone of all religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians,
+      the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of
+      farther India. Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and
+      most effective blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely
+      assailed and overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the
+      more imposing and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find,
+      in none of the great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of
+      scientific men, the slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject
+      worthy of consideration at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre
+      definitional place in the dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive
+      encyclopedias have no room for it, except as it may be defined, under some
+      correlate of motion, as "the latent possibility of a nebula," or of
+      "undifferentiated primeval mist," originally pervading the interplanetary
+      spaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall,
+      Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their
+      experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the
+      purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in
+      the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers
+      after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of
+      investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions
+      against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value
+      whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting
+      "life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is
+      necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion
+      are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of
+      facts only, and the latter entirely on <i>pre</i>conceived and <i>pre</i>judicial
+      notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no
+      objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to
+      the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set
+      themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular
+      potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we
+      must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the
+      theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is
+      God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the
+      heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote
+      of the universe:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God
+      the soul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as
+      science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more
+      household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires"
+      more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less
+      dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes
+      for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer
+      represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating
+      the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still
+      industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater
+      number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this
+      gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual
+      controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable
+      statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as
+      scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he
+      has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic
+      achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of
+      science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that
+      this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between
+      materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason
+      why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim
+      of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the
+      slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did
+      more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than
+      Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing
+      to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but
+      refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that
+      man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so
+      much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of
+      Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter,
+      between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense
+      and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated
+      primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from
+      whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have
+      arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we
+      shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a
+      thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the
+      maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could
+      span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which
+      no daring mortal could ever pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the
+      necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful
+      construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the
+      "Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method
+      as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he
+      would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the
+      continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in
+      the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical
+      manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards
+      advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes
+      of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living
+      organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a
+      foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of
+      either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in
+      this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional
+      variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid
+      substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological
+      differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and
+      re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more
+      exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated
+      potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to
+      abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end,
+      and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bridge will never be built.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="02"></a>Chapter II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Life--Its True Genesis.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of
+      the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show
+      that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of
+      celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly
+      admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by
+      observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained
+      that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to
+      the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the
+      principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious
+      force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only
+      governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter
+      rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but
+      instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on
+      the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and
+      comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look
+      upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a
+      "correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of
+      demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what
+      way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable
+      fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes,
+      the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling
+      streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All
+      along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this
+      wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious
+      life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and
+      flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to
+      spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[<a href="#foot4">4</a>]
+      For like all living principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die.
+      It is immortal in its primal source, immortal all along its bright
+      pathway, immortal as it flows onward to eternity, immortal in its return
+      to the bosom of God. It is no postulate, no corollary, no mere
+      hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered correlative of motion," no
+      "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one grand comprehensive <i>Datum</i>
+      on which all the objective, as well as subjective, data of the universe
+      rest. It is the same "spirit that moved upon the face of the depths," in
+      that majestic Dawn of Creation when the "evening and the morning were the
+      first day;" the same spirit that "upholds the order of the heavens;" that
+      pervades the vast realm of Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight,
+      descends in the loving raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in
+      the murmuring stream, and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness
+      to the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it
+      up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion
+      because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its
+      artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically
+      handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that
+      Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was
+      no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some
+      undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular
+      complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring
+      affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary
+      spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of
+      which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the
+      slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially
+      travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so
+      called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a
+      purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from
+      Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent
+      physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says:
+      "Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital
+      action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion
+      that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just
+      as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we
+      were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces."
+      And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special
+      field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the
+      opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to
+      recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to
+      the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the
+      doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this
+      genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
+      renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
+      statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
+      comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
+      the command "to bring forth" was issued:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, <i>the
+      fowl of the air</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
+      and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. <i>Let us make man in our own image</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
+      with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
+      Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
+      This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
+      paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
+      crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
+      the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
+      post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
+      life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
+      the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
+      writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
+      origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
+      geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
+      written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking
+      Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the <i>Cosmos</i> to escape him,
+      would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece
+      was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning
+      and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of
+      creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate
+      observations of modern geological science. Before there could have
+      appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest
+      primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine
+      vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation
+      of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by,
+      inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from
+      primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever
+      inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other
+      inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as
+      answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and
+      decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital
+      process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their
+      primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis
+      declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first
+      successfully entered upon by the Abb&eacute; Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet,
+      and others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his
+      co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically
+      established by inductive methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Nihil ex nihilo</i> is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as <i>omne
+      vivum ex vivo.</i> That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary
+      least considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without
+      some vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital
+      manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded,
+      and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What
+      greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the
+      two of a physiological or vital unit? [<a href="#foot5">5</a>] At all
+      events, it is as impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one
+      unit as the other. And so long as legitimate induction supports the
+      doctrine of the Bible Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary
+      assumption which is wholly without verification or proof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout
+      the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance
+      of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact,
+      there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land
+      vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the
+      way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals.
+      Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land
+      vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar
+      command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by
+      what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis?
+      Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians
+      before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor
+      did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative
+      conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of
+      years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable
+      genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the
+      metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations,
+      which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is
+      contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it
+      should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any
+      other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities
+      of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic
+      science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much
+      credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A
+      disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two
+      interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But
+      the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which
+      is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of
+      conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind,
+      it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently
+      disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more
+      distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or
+      disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the
+      supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the
+      formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter
+      incredibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the
+      inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as
+      we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational
+      interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words,
+      translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth"
+      --contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole
+      "mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand <i>questio
+      vexata</i> of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs
+      of all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (<i>i.e.</i>
+      each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this
+      physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as
+      formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life
+      hitherto occurring upon our globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in
+      Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the
+      experiments of the renowned Abb&eacute; Spallanzani--all the alleged
+      "fantastic assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism,"
+      by whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "<i>molecules
+      organiques,</i>" as put forth by the French school of materialists--all
+      the <i>primordia viventium</i> of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular
+      machinery" and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert
+      Spencer and Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of
+      life ever spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find
+      that they all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the
+      Bible Genesis, <i>and all are explained by them.</i> We say <i>all</i>,
+      with one exception only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and
+      majestic this exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came
+      from no "muddy vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him
+      into existence. He who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was
+      to be created only a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God
+      created He him." And, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, <i>he
+      became a living soul</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will,
+      without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the
+      chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it.
+      Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly,
+      yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye
+      defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk
+      so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the
+      awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the
+      primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of
+      myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at
+      the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite
+      Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because <i>you</i> cannot
+      annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal
+      compass of <i>your</i> brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and
+      intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at <i>His</i> sovereign
+      and commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the
+      threshold of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of
+      spirit, and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or
+      "multiplieth words without knowledge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction.
+      It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of
+      God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the
+      abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or
+      power of God which operates (continuously operates) <i>to impart life to
+      inanimate nature.</i>[<a href="#foot6">6</a>] From the connection in which
+      it here stands it means this, as in other connections it means the power
+      which operates (continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and
+      good (God-like) in man. There is no implication in the text that this
+      life-giving principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On
+      the contrary, there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just
+      as operative now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given
+      by Professor Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout
+      inanimate nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased
+      its operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this
+      connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the
+      aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive,
+      animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of mind.[<a
+      href="#foot7">7</a>] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a
+      part nature, and a part not nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the <i>ZRA</i>.
+      the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living
+      thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its
+      own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate
+      commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring
+      forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not
+      first received its <i>baptism of life</i> from God--in other words,
+      derived the animating principle of life from the source of all Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of
+      Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here
+      give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the vegetation
+      of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused to be
+      produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a definite and
+      comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the animating
+      principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most remarkable
+      genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic idea, namely,
+      that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor any specific act
+      of creation, were what governed in the case of both vegetal and animal
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione natur&aelig; non quseritur
+      miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St.
+      Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held
+      that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good
+      for all time. But we are not seeking for early and medi&aelig;val
+      authority. What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly
+      obeying just such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring
+      forth," however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the
+      opinion of our modern scientists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
+      definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
+      vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
+      allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
+      living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
+      hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
+      uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
+      to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
+      not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
+      own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral <i>plexus</i>, and
+      Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
+      and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
+      <i>a priori</i> induction will ever extend this line <i>or plexus</i> to
+      man. The developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital
+      link that will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift
+      the latter up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain
+      specifically in his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies,
+      upwards or downwards.[<a href="#foot8">8</a>] And this word "type" implies
+      a fundamental ground-plan--an archetype--an original conception of what
+      each should unconditionally be, and what plane each should as
+      unconditionally occupy. Man's place in nature can never be changed or
+      modified by materialistic speculations. Whatever theories the materialists
+      may spin into the unsubstantial warp and woof of their scientific formul&aelig;
+      respecting life, will never stand before the tenacious and stubborn
+      physiological facts which almost any thoroughly-informed and well-read
+      scholar of nature may readily present against them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
+      life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors whose
+      theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all his
+      rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him, this
+      unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the <i>genetrix
+      omnium viventium</i>, or the living <i>mother</i> on whose bosom he shall
+      rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields beyond.
+      Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails not to
+      perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal principles of
+      life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the forests in which he
+      had previously hunted the deer, other and different forest growths are
+      constantly making their appearance, without any apparent intervention of
+      seeds, but not without the supervisional care and direction of the Great
+      Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie grasses have disappeared, only
+      to give place to the more nutritious <i>gramma</i> coveted by his favorite
+      game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
+      against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
+      to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
+      which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
+      behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
+      will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
+      the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
+      infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
+      But how about the pre&euml;xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon,
+      the megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
+      period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
+      did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
+      and we will answer it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
+      all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
+      matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
+      modifications, combinations, etc.,[<a href="#foot9">9</a>] chemically as
+      well as molecularly considered. This, they claim, is not a mere
+      hypothetical judgment, but a mathematically demonstrable proposition.
+      Grant it for the sake of the argument, and then see if the mastodon does
+      not promptly emerge from some one of their "experimental flasks," as they
+      choose to put it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
+      etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
+      statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
+      well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
+      some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
+      plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
+      materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
+      conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
+      as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
+      must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
+      some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
+      number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
+      molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
+      possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
+      infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
+      cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
+      occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
+      follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
+      or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
+      Intelligence" of the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted
+      era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made
+      their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's
+      more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary
+      for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is
+      concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively
+      possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his
+      essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion.
+      All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits
+      an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment
+      were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic
+      theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus,
+      or the first fungus-spore. [<a href="#foot10">10</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of
+      both plants and animals have <i>disappeared</i> from the earth for the
+      want of the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and
+      flourished. What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that
+      they originally <i>appeared</i> from the presence of these identical
+      conditions, whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have
+      occurred? We put this question not simply because the Bible Genesis
+      asserts that "<i>out of the ground</i> made the Lord God to grow" every
+      plant of the field "before it was in the earth," as well as every herb of
+      the field "before it grew;" nor because it declares that their primordial
+      germs are in the earth; nor because it speaks of the earth as containing
+      within itself the "animating principle of life." But we put it on the
+      irrefragable logic of the materialist's own premises and conclusions. They
+      may use other and different physiological terms from what we should care
+      to employ, but their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force,"
+      their "highly differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing
+      more than what we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital
+      conditions," etc. Their preference for the terms they employ, over
+      essential "qualities" or "properties" of matter, is entirely due to the
+      obvious invalidity of their conclusions, except as their physical theory
+      of life may help them out of an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more
+      convenient term on which to allege the <i>de novo</i> origin of life--its
+      spontaneous manifestation in their experimental flasks--than any vital
+      principle primarily inhering in matter, and manifesting itself whenever
+      conditions favor. It is to validate their own reasoning that they
+      construct their fallacious force-premises, from which to draw their
+      materialistic inductions. In other words, theirs is the fallacy of <i>non
+      causa pro causa,</i> or that vicious process of reasoning which alleges
+      some other than the real cause of vital manifestation, and fastens
+      induction where none is legitimately inferable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree
+      that in all life-manifestations there must be some pre&euml;xisting vital
+      force or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or
+      animal, can come into existence.[<a href="#foot11">11</a>] M. Pouchet
+      says: "I have always thought that organized beings were animated by forces
+      which are in no way reducible to physical or chemical forces." The Abb&eacute;
+      Needham is satisfied to formulate a "force v&eacute;getative," so far as
+      plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably falls back on vital force or
+      energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique," which is essentially
+      inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations. According to the
+      latter, the whole universe is an "<i>organisme absolu</i>" constantly
+      endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all conceivable
+      directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full
+      interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their
+      theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life
+      is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
+      distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
+      For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
+      from all vital manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
+      of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
+      transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
+      and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
+      conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
+      solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
+      among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
+      of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [<a
+      href="#foot12">12</a>] which merely fluctuates more or less in its ever
+      persistent parts, and moreover, day by day, completes and transforms
+      itself by means of reproduction." But this attempt to give a poetic
+      glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's speculations, and bring his
+      commanding name into support of the evolution theory of development, will
+      prove utterly futile in the light of his "archetype," and the persistency
+      with which he concedes that nature adheres to perfected forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Goethe accepts the doctrine of <i>vis centripeta</i>, beyond the influence
+      of which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying
+      or variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
+      variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
+      inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
+      not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned <i>by</i>
+      circumstances <i>to</i> circumstances," as the eagle to the air and
+      mountain top, the mole to the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to
+      the water in which he frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and
+      the night air. We should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after
+      the Great Architect's pattern, <i>to</i> circumstances, and is only varied
+      <i>by</i> circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of
+      variability. For the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal
+      pattern, after which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals
+      has been fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose
+      mind, or rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential
+      archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this <i>Archeus</i>
+      pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from the mind
+      of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but from the
+      one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all living things
+      were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that world "which,"
+      according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that is contained
+      sensibly in our world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the
+      influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical
+      modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of
+      types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any
+      way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make
+      nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even
+      then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we
+      attribute to nature a <i>purpose</i> to modify persistent forms under a
+      law that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an
+      archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of
+      intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the
+      type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not,
+      therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle
+      or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any
+      predetermining will or agency in the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be
+      thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological
+      character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations,
+      before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an
+      effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind
+      would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language
+      itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern
+      materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least
+      one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic
+      reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories
+      and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or
+      entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract
+      ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or
+      co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The
+      personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and
+      obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if
+      not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality,
+      spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to
+      fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the
+      ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God,
+      angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of
+      worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites,
+      ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and
+      other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and
+      machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our
+      language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals,
+      and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most
+      majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the
+      iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of
+      Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
+      two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
+      should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
+      inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
+      screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
+      greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
+      science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
+      the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
+      or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
+      words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
+      manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="03"></a>Chapter III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Alternations of Forest Growths.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
+      alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
+      apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
+      wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
+      been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
+      their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
+      ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them
+      satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the
+      phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that
+      these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of
+      scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and
+      ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer.
+      And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes
+      of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can
+      only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of
+      these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly
+      lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those
+      noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States
+      Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in
+      question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor
+      any very important new facts given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we
+      think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and
+      collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our
+      ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this
+      ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its
+      implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into
+      silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This
+      remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in
+      themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true
+      that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter
+      of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the
+      further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in
+      the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the
+      waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature,
+      with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the
+      11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was
+      specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in
+      this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested
+      by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution,
+      but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts
+      and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time
+      determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new
+      genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he
+      treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough
+      to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other
+      species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before
+      the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade
+      over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps
+      centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees
+      belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore
+      again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may
+      have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other
+      causes; but, in many instances, <i>this explanation is not probable</i>."
+      It is manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this
+      connection, in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed"
+      any other germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits
+      that, in many instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the
+      dissemination of seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the
+      exploded notion that vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous
+      instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages in the
+      earth." He further says, in the same connection, that "their vitality
+      seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which
+      nature deposits them;" although he is reluctant to accept the accounts of
+      "the growth of seeds which had lain for ages in the ashy dryness of the
+      Egyptian catacombs," believing that they should be received with great
+      caution, if not rejected altogether. But why he should scruple about
+      receiving these speculative accounts of ancient Egyptian cereals, which
+      are sometimes hawked about the country for two and three dollars a seed,
+      and, in the same breath, accept the absurder theory that seeds may lie
+      dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and most enduring woods will
+      utterly perish and disappear in a few brief years, is wholly inexplicable
+      to us, except as an hypothesis to force a conclusion, or to account for
+      the otherwise unaccountable alternations of forest growths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide
+      seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not
+      entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would be
+      protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and other
+      assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr. Dwight,
+      for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by actual
+      observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and thoroughly
+      surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils below the last
+      glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach them. As the
+      accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the
+      purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a nine-days
+      wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the indestructibility
+      of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a like purpose in
+      imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly be accepted by the
+      intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light of all the facts
+      herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are speedily perishable
+      by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed that will survive
+      beyond the second year when subjected to such exposure. If they do not
+      germinate the first year, their vitality is utterly gone the second year,
+      as hopelessly so as if they had been cast into the fire and consumed to
+      ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes
+      the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil
+      brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants
+      entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up,
+      in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have
+      remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest
+      calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer;
+      and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's
+      rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil
+      burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be
+      found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in
+      Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its
+      waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that
+      which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from
+      Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from
+      Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various
+      depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil
+      must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner
+      brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were
+      wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they
+      did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and
+      species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by
+      us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to
+      microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of
+      any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully
+      examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several
+      large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation.
+      But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although
+      the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the
+      seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of
+      this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into
+      newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years,
+      is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without
+      sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of
+      hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the
+      neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than
+      oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and
+      entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that
+      the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter,
+      while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the
+      "germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber
+      growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as
+      in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the
+      natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by
+      the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other
+      natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or
+      "vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting
+      "the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis
+      has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first
+      instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and
+      implicitly followed since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New
+      York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake
+      Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and
+      growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch,
+      ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by
+      the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The
+      trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally
+      poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple,
+      spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a
+      tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important
+      fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that
+      replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths,
+      supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does
+      not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were
+      altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the
+      tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance
+      and growth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely
+      communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for
+      fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of
+      1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white
+      oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for
+      propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted
+      too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any
+      special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the
+      immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from
+      natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a
+      storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and
+      was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated
+      that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago)
+      "had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that
+      prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no
+      neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the
+      nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been
+      promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is,
+      unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune
+      season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West,
+      the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long
+      before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the
+      alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and through
+      forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was possible
+      that their seeds could have been derived. One of these tornadoes the
+      writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South Alabama, and he
+      is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that the instances are
+      rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean path of a tornado,
+      through any of our primitive forests, has been succeeded by the same
+      growth of timber as that borne down by the winds. Where the path of this
+      ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine forest, a clean growth of
+      oak was buttressed on either side by pine; and <i>vice versa</i>, where it
+      swept an oak forest. And it is certain that the tornado, whenever it may
+      have occurred, could have exhibited no such discriminating freak as
+      alternately to distribute acorns in pine growths, and pine cones in oak
+      growths, either to make good a scientific theory or balk an unscientific
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some
+      years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground
+      was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had
+      been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch
+      had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly
+      taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a
+      deciduous, and <i>vice versa.</i> We have any number of well authenticated
+      facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give
+      place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to
+      which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the
+      swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place
+      without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (<i>Larix Americana</i>)
+      may be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded
+      by the balsam fir (<i>Abies balsamea</i>), which may be probably caused by
+      the partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen
+      tree that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for
+      a period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed
+      extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a
+      state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were
+      manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the
+      soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the
+      accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable
+      for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at
+      that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any
+      considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently
+      granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up
+      in the interest of speculative parties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population
+      found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the
+      country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the
+      swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
+      artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
+      appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
+      latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
+      the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
+      for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
+      in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
+      growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
+      the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
+      growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
+      favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
+      swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
+      nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
+      the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
+      all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
+      Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
+      all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
+      the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
+      of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
+      Bible genesis nowhere affirms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
+      Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
+      dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
+      the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
+      evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
+      growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
+      "seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
+      stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
+      the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible
+      genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
+      locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
+      his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
+      conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
+      practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
+      philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
+      rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
+      fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
+      adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
+      by an oak forest, <i>where there were a few oaks previously scattered
+      through the woods to furnish seed.</i>" This is a very cautious, as well
+      as circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made,
+      had his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz,
+      Professor Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously
+      scattered through the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical
+      considerations" taken into account by him, as a philosophical botanist
+      rather than a practical one. They were necessary for the extreme caution
+      with which he would state a proposition when its "conditioning facts" were
+      not fully known by him. His anxiety to account for the appearance of an
+      oak forest in the place of a pine, where the latter had been cut off, was
+      commendable enough to justify him in a pretty broad supposition, but not
+      in any such general statement as he here makes. Had he consulted any of
+      the older inhabitants of Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his
+      own state, he would have found that not a few oak forests had succeeded
+      the pine without the intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered
+      acorns, in the localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of
+      distribution have been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in
+      localties where the shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white
+      oak itself. No squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get
+      hickory nuts, and few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and
+      thinner-shelled walnuts are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is
+      provident, but no more so than he is fastidious in the choice of his food.
+      He never plants acorns except for his own gratification, and is never
+      gratified with indifferent food so long as he can command that which is to
+      his liking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those
+      necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they
+      inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly
+      indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the
+      fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my
+      correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded <i>by a
+      spontaneous growth of trees of another kind.</i>" In the sense in which he
+      manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest
+      might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on
+      that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged
+      seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the <i>Acer</i> family
+      excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in
+      a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or
+      chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones.
+      A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor
+      accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural
+      tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in
+      nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous
+      generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as
+      we advance in this work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply
+      unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest
+      operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to
+      adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language
+      in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are
+      called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this
+      almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of
+      Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There
+      is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a
+      spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also
+      mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks
+      following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold
+      places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm,
+      etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was
+      expressed at the asking of the question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by
+      Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted
+      for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring
+      conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis.
+      They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if
+      the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not
+      "spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as
+      with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too
+      meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory
+      conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding
+      trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking
+      lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are
+      facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the
+      presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said
+      to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at
+      distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any
+      native forest from which seed could have been derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a
+      town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that
+      had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste,
+      "yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, <i>where there was not a
+      single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the place</i>."
+      Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white pine, of
+      which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory." He is
+      greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but
+      readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles
+      by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to
+      Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of
+      them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been
+      caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This
+      might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole
+      grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been
+      provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular
+      locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not
+      have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way,
+      and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the
+      Bible genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he
+      imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the
+      cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest,
+      within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to
+      vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by
+      any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils,
+      at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation;
+      and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not
+      germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows
+      that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is
+      utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the
+      nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty
+      inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two
+      years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as
+      so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is
+      hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their
+      old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings
+      stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome
+      were laid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered
+      few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as
+      well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest,
+      which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient
+      vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.),
+      on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago (<i>circiter</i>
+      1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was
+      wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had
+      the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five
+      acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered
+      the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up
+      a grove of white pines, covering the field and retaining its figure
+      exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or
+      chestnut tree;" and he adds, "<i>there was not a single pine whose seeds
+      were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been
+      planted on this spot</i>." He supposes, however, that the "seeds" (pine
+      cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought them up
+      "within the limits of vegetation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all
+      that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany,
+      and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with
+      forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably
+      covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de
+      Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of
+      the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same
+      idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered
+      with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the
+      time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the
+      fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white
+      oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and
+      many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above
+      the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have
+      succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the
+      hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact
+      that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at
+      intervals among the larger deciduous trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than
+      that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on
+      gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at
+      once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or
+      where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts
+      which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order
+      of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the
+      different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps, <i>vice
+      versa</i>. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a brief
+      summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of the
+      country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less well-informed
+      on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says that in the
+      region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871, "dense growths
+      of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing rapidly;" but he
+      omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to state the previous
+      growths of timber, or whether there were any neighboring growths of poplar
+      along the track of the burnt district from which seed might have been
+      derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here are some of his more important statements:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew
+      up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other
+      deciduous trees, and <i>vice versa</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off,
+      oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft
+      maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal
+      more of the last named than any other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were
+      simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one
+      that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the
+      "Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information
+      really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his
+      suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and
+      surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of
+      the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any
+      neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new
+      forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important
+      physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to
+      proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to
+      be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading
+      countries of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in
+      New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by
+      the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by
+      pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated,
+      without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the
+      absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other
+      soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been
+      ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm,
+      and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in
+      the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we
+      often see a hazel coppice; after a time the crat&aelig;gus, and finally
+      the oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite
+      aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes
+      the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness
+      of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of
+      timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey
+      from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of
+      Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt
+      wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up
+      immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In
+      noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a
+      very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce,
+      pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently
+      produce nothing but poplars, <i>where none of that species of tree was
+      previously to be found"</i>. But facts of a similar character are too
+      numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent
+      authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial
+      germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The
+      appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of
+      them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of
+      passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable
+      circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to
+      plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have
+      occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a
+      physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify
+      a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine
+      forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive
+      areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and
+      yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over
+      the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the
+      ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it,
+      after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have
+      been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter
+      whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the
+      tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born
+      forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living,
+      indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was
+      specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible
+      genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and
+      others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational
+      theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest
+      growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too
+      confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of
+      scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of
+      pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when
+      effectually turned on the sneerer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a
+      singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the
+      appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake,
+      which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in
+      this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a
+      disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the
+      value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants
+      were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the
+      earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer.
+      And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not
+      conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain
+      were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital
+      units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a
+      circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as
+      all candid and impartial readers will agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the
+      theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except
+      that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to
+      meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his
+      position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or
+      to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish
+      little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader
+      will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I
+      had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+      heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several
+      hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+      years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native
+      vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than
+      is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not
+      only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, <i>but
+      twelve species of plants </i> (not including grasses and sedges)
+      flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath." The
+      attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different
+      meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled
+      by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only
+      in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make
+      their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the
+      fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the
+      soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want
+      of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made
+      their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater
+      changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New
+      England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by
+      the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The
+      open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more
+      aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle
+      for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly
+      seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find,
+      beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary
+      for their more successful growth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold
+      centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere
+      obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its
+      bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in
+      obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God,"
+      she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the
+      eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind
+      guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will."
+      But forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise
+      up in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for
+      ages, or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If
+      the butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies
+      dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In
+      all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in
+      mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains
+      to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen,
+      mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in
+      her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first
+      command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it
+      expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been
+      implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of
+      seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields
+      them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so
+      that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the
+      language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Nature never lends<br /> The smallest scruple of her excellence,<br />
+        But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines<br /> Herself the glory of a
+        creditor--<br /> <i>Both thanks and use</i>."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws
+      of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will
+      never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her
+      glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the
+      seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her
+      bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant
+      and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her
+      legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful
+      breast, and her "copy is eterne."
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="04"></a>Chapter IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
+      of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
+      place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
+      unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
+      trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
+      insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
+      plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
+      explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
+      small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
+      which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
+      provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
+      these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
+      in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
+      coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
+      may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
+      plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
+      until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
+      scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
+      to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
+      have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
+      when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
+      vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
+      conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
+      fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we have
+      said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific path.
+      Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on vegetable
+      physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our cereal crops
+      have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the "ashy dryness"
+      of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in which to preserve
+      them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all their machinery
+      for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are the catacombs to
+      be despised, as compared with any out-door means of storage yet suggested
+      by the wit of man. The only means nature has of storage, or rather of
+      preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed back to her bosom--the
+      earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it may be speedily
+      quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself. For "that which
+      thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much more is that dead
+      which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned to nature's
+      bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it quickens or not, it
+      dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from the earth, any more
+      than there is for the occupants of the exhumed mummy-cases of ancient
+      Thebes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
+      nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
+      thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
+      the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
+      belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
+      former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
+      to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
+      least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
+      their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
+      these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
+      after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
+      fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
+      circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
+      had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
+      merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
+      when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
+      no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
+      exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
+      protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
+      whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
+      chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
+      Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
+      Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
+      remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
+      admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
+      on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
+      he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
+      implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
+      wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
+      "dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
+      says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
+      which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
+      the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
+      or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
+      for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface
+      soil exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became
+      covered with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these
+      facts to show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had
+      lain dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
+      erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
+      may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
+      than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
+      dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
+      this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
+      erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
+      household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
+      they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they <i>do</i>
+      follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
+      "Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
+      indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
+      extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
+      after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
+      Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
+      together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
+      at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
+      lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
+      connected with the case was, that <i>the raspberry seeds were recovered
+      from the stomach</i> (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural
+      Society, where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
+      circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
+      provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
+      the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
+      conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
+      would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
+      comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
+      years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
+      raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
+      Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
+      kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
+      were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
+      one." This statement must be received <i>cum grano</i>. The Romans never
+      used coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After
+      a battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
+      was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
+      taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
+      might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
+      soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
+      very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
+      particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
+      the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
+      posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
+      for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
+      that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
+      recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
+      the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
+      well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
+      in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
+      about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
+      record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
+      stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
+      seeds, as well as the <i>obolus</i> in the mouth of the dead soldier,
+      should be found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If
+      they had withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred
+      years, in the surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not
+      to have obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible
+      for belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
+      mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
+      England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
+      of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
+      not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
+      case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
+      distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
+      discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
+      tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
+      soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
+      "Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
+      there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
+      buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
+      other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
+      wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
+      wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
+      trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
+      or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
+      bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
+      of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
+      seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
+      of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
+      alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+      States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
+      fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
+      circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
+      the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is <i>Erechthites
+      hieracifolia</i>, and it is well known to the botanists of New England.
+      Its seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and
+      it is not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by
+      birds, and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
+      survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
+      burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
+      any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
+      heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
+      of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
+      no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
+      their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
+      seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
+      those <i>grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
+      southern hemisphere</i>, not within thousands of miles from the clearing
+      in which they so promptly make their appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
+      deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
+      heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
+      growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
+      the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
+      two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
+      from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
+      to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
+      only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
+      a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
+      must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
+      its place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
+      nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of the
+      burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil where a
+      coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but from "vital
+      units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those taking advantage
+      of environing conditions, just as <i>Bacteria</i> or <i>Torultz</i> spring
+      from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots of stramonium, in
+      a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring directly from the
+      surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living organism must have
+      perished in the heat, and not at any considerable depth below it. Their
+      first appearance is on the immediate surface of the burnt ground, the same
+      as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when there were no seeds to be
+      distributed, except such as must have come from the southern hemisphere,
+      or been casually picked up by birds, and taken their slim chances of
+      survival after passing through the natural "gristmills" of the birds. And
+      even this supposition, would only account for the appearance of a single
+      stramonium plant or two, not for a thick bed of it covering the entire
+      ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in this and other cases, is
+      wholly out of the question; as much so as when white clover makes its
+      appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds of miles away from where
+      there has been a single sprig of clover growing in a thousand years. Every
+      closely observant person, living for any length of time on our western
+      prairies, is familiar with the fact that when the rank and hardier
+      grasses, usually growing thereon, are effectually fed down by stock, and
+      especially by sheep, the prairie grasses disappear, and the ground at once
+      comes in with white clover, and the other nutritious gramma or grasses of
+      our common pasture lands. No seed has been sown in these localities, and
+      none could have been found had every square inch of the surface soil been
+      examined by the most powerful microscope. The white clover and these
+      nutritious grasses make their appearance on these prairies, just as the
+      first sprig of vegetation did on the earth, not from seed, but from pre&euml;xisting
+      vital units or primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and
+      awaiting the necessary conditions for their development and growth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
+      explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
+      to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
+      no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
+      generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
+      seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
+      impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
+      seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
+      thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
+      eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
+      gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
+      the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
+      gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
+      utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
+      corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
+      involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
+      power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
+      seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
+      natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
+      macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
+      gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
+      pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
+      gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
+      outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
+      passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
+      pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
+      appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
+      observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
+      slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
+      the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
+      they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
+      hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
+      the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
+      small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
+      and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
+      some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
+      otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
+      even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
+      bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
+      length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
+      have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
+      character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
+      mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
+      comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
+      have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
+      crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
+      crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
+      fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
+      bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
+      Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
+      chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
+      than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
+      digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
+      "natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
+      "the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
+      loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
+      of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
+      relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
+      without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
+      transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
+      number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
+      of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
+      as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
+      other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
+      have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
+      mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
+      dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
+      this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
+      agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
+      well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
+      given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
+      or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
+      seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
+      late civil war, a little leguminous plant (<i>Lespedeza striata</i>)
+      sprang up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known
+      how it came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some
+      parts of the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as
+      a forage plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of
+      this plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon,
+      or the phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain
+      localities in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very
+      general appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was
+      not particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from
+      one southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant,
+      they naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation,
+      especially in those sections where other forage plants and nutritious
+      gramma were not abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance
+      just the same had the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for
+      aggressive legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
+      suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
+      as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
+      been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
+      southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
+      prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
+      to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
+      and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
+      South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
+      it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
+      thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
+      war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
+      vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
+      in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
+      South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
+      Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
+      states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
+      winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
+      quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
+      wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
+      plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
+      favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
+      organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
+      their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
+      on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
+      examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
+      the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
+      life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
+      have named.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
+      "conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
+      soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates," "<i>molecules
+      organiques</i>," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
+      life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
+      theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
+      developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
+      dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
+      conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
+      of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
+      only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
+      "molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
+      from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
+      two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
+      with matter--<i>molar</i> motion, or that relating to matter moving in
+      mass, and <i>molecular</i> motion, or that relating to the movements of
+      matter in its unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
+      collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
+      mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
+      accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
+      other words, it is simply a <i>process</i> or <i>mode</i> of action, and
+      stands in about the same relation to matter as <i>growth</i> does to a
+      living plant or tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either
+      objectively or subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To
+      allege its indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate
+      an additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
+      "force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but it
+      is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as it
+      stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
+      motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in both
+      its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor less
+      than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises having, at
+      best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of moving matter. It
+      would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that matter is the only
+      actual existence, than to predicate of matter a co-existent and wholly
+      inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely physical hypothesis of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
+      local fern (<i>Schizoea pusilla</i>) growing in the pine barrens of New
+      Jersey, affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible
+      genesis of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South.
+      It was at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all
+      our ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
+      ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
+      Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
+      south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
+      north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
+      appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
+      thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
+      the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
+      half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
+      will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
+      of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
+      known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
+      not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
+      hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
+      vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
+      high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
+      another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
+      respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
+      the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
+      mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
+      governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
+      manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
+      globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
+      appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for <i>Bacteria</i>
+      in the blood, <i>Torul&aelig;</i> in the tissues, plastide particles,
+      morphological cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the
+      smallest conceivable "unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the
+      lordliest and most defiant forest oak that ever bared its arms to the
+      storms and tempests of centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk
+      its head with an air of affected incredulity, and superciliously turn
+      aside from this hypothesis, because it does not shock our veneration for
+      the Sacred Scriptures, but let its special advocates advance some more
+      consistent and rational life-theory than that of "molecular machinery
+      worked by molecular force," or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in
+      confessing that they are unable to draw the first line between "living
+      matter" and "dead matter," as they absurdly use these terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
+      question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
+      seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
+      theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
+      east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
+      respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
+      this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
+      the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
+      changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
+      theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
+      directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
+      plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
+      "war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
+      relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
+      and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
+      causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
+      mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
+      habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
+      reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
+      vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
+      common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
+      must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
+      compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
+      conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
+      shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
+      vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
+      been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
+      climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
+      localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
+      growth of local vegetations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
+      seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
+      regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
+      these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
+      vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
+      units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
+      determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
+      resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
+      seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
+      as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
+      given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
+      not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
+      chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
+      likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
+      any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
+      of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
+      soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
+      judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
+      failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
+      experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
+      subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
+      less useful to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
+      As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
+      nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
+      out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
+      of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
+      no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
+      life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
+      inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
+      fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
+      they <i>might</i> produce life <i>de novo</i>.[<a href="#foot13">13</a>]
+      But the most daring physicist would stand aghast at the bare proposal of
+      such an experiment. Neither his knowledge of chemistry, nor the present
+      uncertain value attaching to "molecular machinery," would justify him, for
+      a moment, in entering upon such a purely tentative and empirical an
+      undertaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
+      in the appearance and geographical distribution of <i>fungi</i>, as
+      universally obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And
+      although it may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line
+      between certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other
+      primitive manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists
+      agree in assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
+      fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
+      classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
+      as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
+      other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
+      necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
+      essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
+      Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
+      obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
+      form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
+      make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
+      them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
+      about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
+      necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
+      development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
+      burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
+      to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
+      commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
+      part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
+      moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
+      which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
+      found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
+      certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
+      of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
+      their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
+      from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
+      nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
+      from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
+      grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
+      disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
+      and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
+      disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
+      mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
+      develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
+      To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
+      different species of <i>Mucor</i>, for instance--for disgusting offal over
+      decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
+      degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
+      creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
+      testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
+      etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
+      of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
+      spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
+      go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
+      apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
+      depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
+      beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
+      select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
+      the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
+      direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
+      conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
+      environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
+      atmosphere--the "<i>pater omnipotens &AElig;ther</i>" of Virgil,
+      "descending into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying
+      showers, and great himself, mingling with her great body" for the
+      development of all things of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with
+      death-pursuing fungi that myriads of their spores might dance without
+      jostling on the point of a cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful
+      than the conceptions of the poet, in personifying the atmosphere as
+      "father &AElig;ther," and the earth as his "joyous spouse." But life, with
+      its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift," has reached its highest
+      conceptions in the mind of the poet, not in the speculations of the
+      scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from many-colored yet invisible
+      threads, is it in the creative mind of a Shakespeare, and how it looms up
+      into "a dome of many-colored glass, staining the white radiance of
+      eternity," under the magic touch of a Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed
+      down to a contemptible piece of "molecular machinery" by the
+      scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its manifestations that it is
+      ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe of all-potential matter and
+      motion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
+      spores of the large puff-ball (<i>Lycoperdon giganteum</i>), as well as
+      those of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose
+      methods of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced
+      artificially. But the process by which their production is thus effected,
+      is more properly a natural than an artificial one. In speaking of
+      truffle-grounds, he says (quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation
+      of beech, or beech and fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury
+      Plain, after the lapse of a few years truffles are produced, and that the
+      plantations continue productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years,
+      after which they cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these
+      cases, but the conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded
+      by the branches of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became
+      favorable for the development of truffle "germs," and they made their
+      appearance just as mushrooms do in caves and other places, where
+      artificial beds are made and chemically balanced for their development and
+      growth. And the reason why they disappeared, after a period of ten or
+      fifteen years, was simply because the proper nutriment of the soil was
+      exhausted, and not in consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the
+      growing trees. One uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of
+      this much-coveted fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions
+      obtain, they <i>appear</i>, and wherever these conditions fail, they <i>disappear</i>,
+      notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
+      soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
+      truffle (<i>Tuber &aelig;stivum</i>) appears under beech trees, another
+      form (<i>Tuber macrosporum</i>) under oak trees, and still a third form (<i>Tuber
+      brumale</i>) under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change
+      in soil conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among
+      oaks, produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
+      amounting to a specific difference in variety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
+      one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
+      horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
+      cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
+      over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
+      time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
+      ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
+      governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
+      whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
+      In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
+      come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
+      its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
+      the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
+      as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
+      Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
+      in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
+      seen by the required telescope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
+      says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
+      dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
+      plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
+      early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
+      summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
+      the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
+      to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
+      of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
+      were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
+      era. These primordial germs, or the <i>ZRA</i> of the Bible genesis, must
+      have preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
+      spore-bearing cryptogam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
+      great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
+      at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
+      oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
+      conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
+      oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
+      All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
+      connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
+      the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
+      all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
+      development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
+      fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
+      connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
+      case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
+      remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
+      micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
+      parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
+      from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
+      parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
+      occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
+      than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
+      springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
+      spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
+      endowed from the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
+      seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
+      could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
+      produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
+      distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
+      stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the <i>first</i>
+      fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
+      divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
+      mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
+      we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
+      comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
+      depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
+      of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
+      condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, <i>Nature</i>, as we
+      half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
+      solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
+      ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
+      radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
+      all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
+      baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
+      idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
+      choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
+      field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
+      her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
+      breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
+      proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
+      life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
+      soul-endowed man.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="05"></a>Chapter V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S.
+      etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of
+      Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856,
+      on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding
+      Food," are the following:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its
+      absolute creation, of which we know nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. "But we assume each species to have been <i>created but once in time
+      and in place</i>, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own
+      law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws
+      external to it.[<a href="#foot14">14</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate,
+      since <i>any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but
+      always fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc</i>.,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates
+      distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the
+      heating rays."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average
+      rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in
+      the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the
+      hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several
+      localities in which the different species of vegetation make their
+      appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific
+      creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount
+      value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and
+      restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from
+      the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs.
+      "Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or
+      restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to doubt
+      that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now, in
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created
+      at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds,
+      is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or
+      scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an
+      experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first
+      bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste
+      over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants
+      peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance,
+      not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have
+      nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because
+      a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from
+      the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we
+      have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man,
+      artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of
+      plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did
+      millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of
+      these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or
+      circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of
+      progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified
+      offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original
+      ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical
+      faith, but never of experimental proof. "<i>Entia non sunt multiplicanda
+      pr&aelig;ter necessitatem</i>" is an old and well-approved maxim,
+      applicable alike to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the
+      innumerable crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is
+      produced without the necessary conditions on which its production depends.
+      "Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest
+      meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course
+      of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and
+      animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements.
+      As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of
+      development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without
+      which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological
+      sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and
+      inevitably produced.[<a href="#foot15">15</a>] And this law is just as
+      dependent on necessary vital conditions as vital manifestations are
+      dependent on a physiological law. There must always be this reciprocal
+      dependence and relationship between conditioning causes and effects.
+      Whenever and wherever the necessary vital conditions exist, the
+      physiological law takes effect, and the requisite vital manifestation is
+      witnessed. And this is no doubt as true of animal as of vegetable life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of
+      which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora.
+      Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">  1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from  0&deg; to 15&deg;.
+  2. " Tropical       "      "         " 15&deg; "  23&deg;.
+  3. " Sub-tropical   "      "         " 23&deg; "  34&deg;.
+  4. " Warm Temperate "      "         " 34&deg; "  45&deg;.
+  5. " Cold           "      "         " 45&deg; "  58&deg;.
+  6. " Sub-arctic     "      "         " 58&deg; "  66&deg;.
+  7. " Arctic         "      "         " 66&deg; "  72&deg;.
+  8. " Polar          "      "         " 72&deg; "  82&deg;.</pre>
+    <p>
+      These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with
+      reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like
+      division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems,
+      extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our
+      equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at
+      their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they
+      respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the
+      next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we
+      ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak
+      of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the
+      elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm
+      temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all
+      latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant
+      life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted
+      for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances,
+      modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the
+      highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight
+      exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that
+      the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should
+      hereafter be extended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation
+      quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical
+      mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate
+      zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer
+      classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are
+      marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey
+      gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant
+      zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of
+      plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind
+      can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these
+      statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the
+      different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of
+      vegetation peculiar to each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance
+      in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein,
+      and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could
+      only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other
+      conditions of that extensive zone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are
+      characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while
+      retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less
+      rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are
+      peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and
+      most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do
+      not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in
+      both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain
+      systems within the equatorial regions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and
+      general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc.,
+      exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a
+      greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery
+      and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels,
+      and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these
+      zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of
+      the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the
+      other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and
+      plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the
+      corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of
+      deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths,
+      cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked
+      characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent
+      grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more
+      extensively into varieties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm
+      temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency
+      is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are
+      more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also
+      abundant in grasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social
+      conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe
+      and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is
+      sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering
+      herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation
+      generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be
+      entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most
+      extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire
+      vegetation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting
+      plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the
+      elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may
+      appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested
+      on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before
+      answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions <i>have</i>
+      been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the
+      distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on
+      climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and
+      isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one
+      important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that
+      of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but
+      once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of
+      its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences
+      of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original
+      plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and
+      that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts
+      of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones
+      where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they
+      attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than
+      satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as
+      reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray,
+      in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work
+      Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he
+      was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not
+      take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication,
+      the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the
+      individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his
+      associate's observations, in considering the very point here under
+      consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his
+      idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in
+      individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in
+      discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view
+      is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with
+      the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of
+      accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or
+      animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their
+      appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and
+      under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions
+      favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these
+      conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its
+      appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but
+      simply the presence of "conditions"--the <i>pro</i>vision of man
+      harmonizing with the <i>pre</i>vision of nature. In the same way the
+      "Japan clover" made its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over
+      the southern states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of
+      plants, but the presence of natural conditions.[<a href="#foot16">16</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be
+      arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general
+      facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly
+      to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and
+      not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast
+      intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others
+      would require us to believe. Take the case of the <i>Schizoea pusilla</i>
+      of the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing
+      in similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their
+      antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this
+      plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long
+      time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that
+      it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to
+      New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these
+      "specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would
+      have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both
+      localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored;
+      and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the
+      fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formul&aelig;,
+      must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite
+      child of nature" that she condescended to create it <i>twice</i> "in time
+      and place," instead of only <i>once</i>. It is a poor rule, they may say,
+      that has no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief
+      in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more
+      rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high
+      authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine
+      currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have
+      played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even
+      across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the
+      appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of
+      miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than
+      the presence of <i>Bacteria</i> or <i>Torul&aelig;</i>[<a href="#foot17">17</a>]
+      in different organic infusions? If the vital units of these <i>infusori&aelig;</i>,
+      are present in experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually
+      admits, why may not the vital germs or units of this <i>Schizoea pusilla</i>
+      have made their appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand
+      and New Jersey, at the same or different periods of time? If Professor
+      Gray regards the microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical
+      forms in inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of
+      nature, then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove
+      that these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which
+      she has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the
+      question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of
+      argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly
+      operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation
+      not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and
+      hence not supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are
+      led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the
+      sub-arctic zone, and <i>vice-versa,</i> and even beyond the equator to the
+      sub-antarctic zone, and still <i>vice versa</i>. Before proceeding to
+      consider the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called
+      glacial periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or
+      considering the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state
+      their position in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and
+      concisely as we know how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the
+      generally accepted one of the evolutionists, as well as most of the
+      present scientific world. As the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet
+      theory of evolution depended on the satisfactory solution of this vexed
+      problem, it became necessary for him to give his best and entire mental
+      energies to the gigantic task which was, by universal consent, assigned
+      him. The reader shall see how admirably the thermal equator is crossed by
+      Mr. Darwin, with his vast swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and
+      other plants, forest trees, anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild
+      animals, such as would gladden the heart of the "great American showman"
+      beyond the most extravagant comparison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve,
+      was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and
+      cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the
+      corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was
+      any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of
+      how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will
+      give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be
+      charged with misrepresentation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and
+      more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions;
+      and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of
+      the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the
+      equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot
+      lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and
+      sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this
+      period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres
+      gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living
+      on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former
+      homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms
+      returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms
+      would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if
+      sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms
+      on the mountains of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its
+      turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere
+      rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the
+      equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the
+      mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These
+      latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes,
+      leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with
+      them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their
+      mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the
+      same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of
+      the intermediate tropical regions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for
+      plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones
+      south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us
+      in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure,
+      even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the strength
+      of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr. Darwin must
+      rest:--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial
+      epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however
+      few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the
+      maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the
+      sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a
+      constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface,
+      being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion
+      or perihelion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the
+      earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any
+      glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not
+      altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time,
+      and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends
+      continuously and permanently much farther north than 80&deg; or 81&deg;.
+      Mt. Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only
+      a few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was
+      traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some
+      ten or twelve degrees further north. [<a href="#foot18">18</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75&deg;,
+      what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the
+      north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope,
+      below 60&deg;, a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The
+      utmost limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time,"
+      conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to
+      55&deg;, or about the northern boundary of England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes
+      of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further
+      south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the
+      sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking
+      of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an
+      ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that
+      the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to
+      the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a
+      moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during
+      the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this
+      continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude.
+      Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only
+      push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm
+      temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the
+      Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of
+      Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less,
+      when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the
+      isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been
+      the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape
+      the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have
+      flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the
+      Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded
+      through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation,
+      that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our
+      northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern
+      ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll
+      has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms
+      down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme
+      northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have
+      managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent
+      habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent?
+      Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it
+      ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible
+      of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only
+      to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these
+      forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern
+      hemisphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more
+      before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that
+      distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly
+      in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been
+      constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must
+      accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period
+      indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them.
+      Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the
+      line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more
+      years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican
+      states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled
+      Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central
+      American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a
+      point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the
+      northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the
+      universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's
+      calculations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To have accomplished this grand glaciatorial feat the North Pole must have
+      donned some twenty times the amount of ice now about both poles of the
+      earth, and so changed the earth's centre of gravity as to have inundated
+      every foot of land on its habitable surface. But if this terrible
+      catastrophy had been avoided, and some of our extreme northern forms had
+      forced their way through the Isthmus into the lowlands of Columbia, they
+      must have done so at their greatest possible peril, even if they had
+      reached the base of Old Mt. Tolima in advance of the thermal equator, now
+      fleeing in dismay before the southern Ice-monarch, with all his
+      isochimenal hosts in mad pursuit of their invaders. And if these
+      adventurous northern forms had succeeded in ascending Mt. Tolima, they
+      could never have got down again, with the assistance of forty glaciations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we can imagine Mr. Darwin promptly snatching his pen to show the
+      stupidity of these northern forms in not climbing Popocatepetl or some
+      other lofty mountain in Central America or Mexico, on their retreat before
+      the still advancing thermal equator. But how this would have helped them
+      to cross the geographical equator, we fail to see. When Mr. Darwin, and
+      the eminent corps of geologists and physicists accepting his solution of
+      this "vexed question," can make a "warm term" south <i>succeed</i> a "cold
+      term" north, we shall have no difficulty in solving the problem ourself.
+      But, unfortunately, the two terms--the cold one north and the warm one
+      south--are simultaneous in occurrence, and the same causes which forced
+      these northern invaders into the tropics, when they followed <i>after</i>
+      the thermal equator, would have driven them ignominously back again <i>before</i>
+      it. The climbing of mountains would only have prolonged their disaster.
+      For after the glaciation north comes the glaciation south, and unless our
+      cold temperate zone were pushed down beyond the geographical equator, none
+      of its living forms could ever have reached the corresponding zone in the
+      southern hemisphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as this "migration theory" is one of paramount importance to modern
+      science, and especially to "Darwinism," [<a href="#foot19">19</a>]
+      distinctively so called, let us, at the risk of repetition and
+      tediousness, propose a scientific expedition for the better solution of
+      this problem. To do this, we propose to cut loose from our stupid
+      predecessors, the plants and animals, and invite Mr. Darwin and some of
+      his more distinguished European contemporaries, not omitting Professors
+      Gray, Winchell, Yeomans, and some few other American admirers of his, to
+      accompany us on a fresh expedition from the warm and cold temperate zones
+      north to the corresponding zones south, <i>purely in the interest of
+      science</i>. To make it certain that the time fixed upon for this
+      "expedition" to start, will not escape their attention, we will state what
+      many of them already well know, that the present eccentricity of the
+      earth's orbit is very low, being only 0.0168, and that, in the year of our
+      Lord 851,800, it will reach its next superior limit, with a few
+      intervening oscillations of such minimum value as to render it hardly
+      worth our while to start before that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall be obliged, of course to invite our distinguished European party
+      to join us on this side of the Atlantic, as their own narrow and
+      contracted continent furnishes no proper field for determining the problem
+      in question. We shall insist upon one condition only: "<i>That they shall
+      never leave the warm temperate zone in which we shall set out on our
+      expedition, except to pass halfway into an adjoining zone as is the habit,
+      at times, with plants and animals</i>." This condition will have to be
+      rigidly observed, otherwise our expedition would be of no scientific value
+      to future generations. As we shall have plenty of time to provide the
+      necessary outfit, we will appoint Mr. Darwin purveyor-general of the
+      party, and hold him responsible for any misadventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will arrange for the expedition to start in the early autumn of the
+      year of our Lord 831,800, or about twenty thousand years before the earth
+      shall reach its next superior limit of eccentricity,--all of us eager, of
+      course, to brave the climatic vicissitudes of the journey, and to solve
+      the "great problem of the ages," which is, to determine how the gigantic
+      elephantoids of the Eocene period managed to cross the thermal equator,
+      and pass into the present arctic regions of our globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As "the king never dies," so the old southern Ice-monarch will be
+      succeeded by the young northern one, at about the period named. We shall
+      then have a decided advantage over our predecessors, the plants and
+      animals, in their journey southward, since we shall know the exact route
+      they took, and need only follow it. Presumably they had no such
+      information, nor had they either chart or compass to guide them,--a
+      circumstance which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently taken into account in
+      predicating intelligence of his favorite pedestrians. Besides, these
+      vegetal and animal forms had one difficulty to encounter which we shall
+      not experience. With all the northern forms driven down into the Central
+      American states, they must have been sadly crowded for room, especially
+      near the Isthmus. The social conifers must have monopolized all the more
+      favored sites on the mountain sides and tops, while the humbler denizens
+      of the forest must have contented themselves with still more limited
+      quarters. The more impatient animals, for lack of necessary forage, must
+      have crowded through the Isthmus only to be driven back by the tropical
+      heats to their proper isotherms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But our warm temperate zone is now moving southward, and our scientific
+      expedition is moving with it. The northern Ice-monarch has resumed
+      absolute sway, and our aphelion distance from the sun has increased some
+      tens millions of miles. We have, in the mean time, moved down to the line
+      of the Gulf states, and are deploying to the right in order to make a
+      triumphant entry into Mexico. Mr. Darwin is daily consulting the
+      isochimenals, and is confident that our northern ice-cap will equal Mr.
+      Croll's highest expectations. The news finally reaches us that the Gulf
+      stream has turned its course southward, and is now pouring its immense
+      treasures of heat into the South Atlantic, if not turning the African
+      "horn" and washing the far-off Australian coast. This fact greatly
+      increases the enthusiasm of our European party, and they hasten forward
+      into the sub-tropical zone, almost "violating conditions" in their haste
+      to enter the tropics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, we crowd the narrow passages of the Isthmus, and the glory of a
+      warm temperate climate bursts upon our view in the Columbian states, of
+      South America. <i>The expedition promises to be an entire success</i>. At
+      least, Mr. Darwin thinks so, and he is now the Sir Oracle of our party. We
+      deliberately enter the lowlands of Columbia, and make ready to ascend the
+      sub-tropical mountains--those formerly equatorial--where the "great
+      scientific problem of the ages" is to be demonstrated. But we are
+      measuring time by almost <i>Sirius</i> distances, and vast geologic
+      periods sweep by without apparent record. The northern ice-cap has been a
+      prodigious one, crowding us nearly down to the geographical equator, with
+      the advantage we have of appropriating some five and half degrees of the
+      sub-tropical zone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the year Anno Domini 851,800 finally rolls round, and the maximum of
+      the earth's ice-cap is reached. Old Mt. Tolima looms up in the distance,
+      and we soon ascertain that its height is sufficient for all scientific
+      purposes. Its summit displays a glittering ice-cap, and we are certain to
+      find the proper isotherm by climbing its umbrageous sides. We accordingly
+      make haste to reach its base, and get there not a minute too soon; for the
+      young southern Ice-monarch has stolen a march on the thermal equator, and
+      is driving it irresistibly back to its old quarters. His march northward
+      is a continuous triumph and ovation up to 55&deg;, and the heart of
+      Patagonia is made glad by his near approach. True, the white gates of
+      commerce are closed about the Horn; but that is no concern of these wild
+      Patagonians. The aggressive Britton is driven out of New Zealand, and that
+      is another source of joy to the savage breast. Tasmania would extend a
+      gladder welcome than all to the Ice-crowned monarch, but alas, not a drop
+      of Tasmanian blood runs in human veins! Cape Good Hope has now a
+      sub-arctic climate, and the heart of the wild Kaffir and Zulu rejoices
+      that the sceptre of "perfidious Albion" is broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thermal equator at length reaches the base of Mt. Tolima, and hastens
+      northward to the Isthmus, and thence to Hondurus and New Guatemala, where,
+      by sheer force of exhaustion, it comes to a halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as the equatorial zone extends fifteen degrees both ways from the
+      thermal equator, its southern limit now rests on the geographical equator,
+      and accordingly encircles the base of our "mount of refuge." We are now up
+      this mountain some sixteen thousand feet above the equatorial lowlands,
+      with the sub-tropical, tropical, and equatorial zones between us and the
+      possibility of our further migration southward, without violating the
+      express conditions imposed at the outset of our expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact soon stares us in the face that we have been no more successful,
+      in our efforts to cross the thermal equator and pass into high southern
+      latitudes, than the stupid plants and animals before us; and Mr Darwin's
+      faith in high mountains springing from equatorial lowlands, disappears in
+      jest and derision as we all good-humoredly agree "to break conditions,"
+      and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and
+      New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve
+      itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness,
+      hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great
+      commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of
+      exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The
+      Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by
+      us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the <i>Herald</i>, of
+      the date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific
+      expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "<i>The Great Wild-Goose
+      Chase after the Thermal Equator</i>"--presenting one of the most humorous
+      bits of sensational pleasantry ever given to the American public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But an apology is due the staider reader for the seeming levity of this
+      narrative adventure. The exposition of Mr. Darwin, though widely accepted
+      on both sides of the Atlantic by the scientific world, has seemed to us
+      too trivial for serious reply. If we have leaped over vast periods of
+      time, it makes no difference with the argument. So long as the thermal
+      equator, or more properly the equatorial zone, or any part of it, lies
+      between the warm or cold temperate forms, whether plants or animals, and
+      their point of destination in the southern hemisphere, they can never
+      migrate thither, any more than the right whale of the arctic seas can swim
+      the equatorial oceans. Nothing is gained by going out of the way to climb
+      mountains, except to hopelessly retard the return of both plants and
+      animals to their native zones. If we have not demonstrated this fact to
+      the reader's fullest comprehension, it will be useless for him ever to
+      write a Q.E.D. at the end of any proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that some eminent astronomers and physicists hesitate to accept
+      the theory that these glacial epochs are due to the eccentricity of the
+      earth's orbit. But the argument favoring it is well fortified and ably
+      advanced, and if we add to the astronomical considerations involved, the
+      physical proofs of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, caused by
+      the excessive accumulation of ice about either pole, and the probable
+      shifting of the Gulf stream to a southerly direction during the glacial
+      period north, it is difficult to resist the conviction that the real cause
+      of glaciation has been suggested in this theory. With all the ice now
+      accumulated about the south pole transferred to the north pole, it would
+      make an ice-cap of over thirty miles in thickness at the pole, and one
+      sloping in all directions southward to about 60&deg;. This accumulation,
+      it is claimed, would so change the earth's centre of gravity as to cause
+      all the equatorial warm waters to flow southward instead of northward, as
+      they now do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This would certainly seem to be a most wonderful provision of nature, as
+      well as one strongly calculated to impress the human mind with the belief
+      that an Infinite <i>Pre</i>vision lies behind all possible <i>pro</i>vision,
+      whether witnessed in the heavens or in the earth, in astronomical or
+      physical phenomena. Everywhere we see infinite perfection, combined with
+      infinite beneficence, in the adaptation of means to ends. Nothing runs to
+      waste--all things are conserved for use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in all the outspoken grandeur of the universe, there is nothing so
+      grand, in exhibition at least, as the simple faith of a child, that "He
+      who watereth the hills from his chambers," and "causeth the day-spring to
+      know his place," will watch over the trustful little sleeper during the
+      darkness and silence of the night.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="06"></a>Chapter VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The Distribution and Premanence of Species.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Professor Gray, in his address before the American Association for the
+      advancement of science, delivered at Dubuque (Ia.) in 1872, while
+      remarking upon the wide extent of similar flora in the same plant zones,
+      says: "If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United
+      States with Japan, Mantchooria and Northern China,--<i>i.e.</i> Eastern
+      North America with Eastern North Asia--half the earth's circumference
+      apart, we find an astonishing similarity." But why astonishing? Had our
+      distinguished botanical professors, in this country and in Europe,
+      thoroughly informed themselves as to the climatic conditions, the general
+      physical features, geographical characteristics, soil-constituents, and
+      other conditional incidences of this Asiatic region, in the light of all
+      the physiological facts before them, the circumstance of this great
+      similarity of flora would have been anything but astonishing. Indeed, the
+      astonishment, if any, would have been expressed at the want of similarity,
+      had it been found to exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since 1862, these distinguished professors have had the great
+      plant-charts of Mr. Arthur Renfrey before them, with the warm temperate
+      zone north accurately laid down in its proper isotherms, as well as the
+      different classes of vegetation peculiar to the two regions referred to,
+      and some general conclusions of value to science might have been drawn
+      therefrom. Besides, the fact of these similar antipodal flora was well
+      known to many of them before this chart was issued. They also knew that
+      all along the higher mountain ranges of this country, as well as in
+      Europe, the same alpine flora was to be found under the same or similar
+      alpine conditions. From Mt. St. Elias, in Alaska, to the Central American
+      States, and thence, through the Isthmus, to the southern extremity of the
+      Andes in South Patagonia, there is one unbroken line of alpine vegetation
+      pressing the sides or summits of the loftier mountain ranges, at altitudes
+      correspondingly varying with the latitudes in which they occur. And the
+      same is true of the Alps in Europe and the Himalaya ranges in Asia, if not
+      of all the mountain systems of the globe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These, and hundreds of other equally suggestive facts, all pointing to
+      geographical, climatic, and other influencing conditions, as the real
+      objective points of inquiry, have been constantly before our botanical
+      friends; and yet they have been content with Mr. Darwin's theory of
+      climbing mountains to cross the geographical equator, under the impression
+      that an enormous ice-cap, or rather prodigious "ice-ulster," would
+      ultimately drift them into the southern hemisphere, or enable them to
+      "coast" their way thither with the greatest imaginable ease. But why
+      insist upon the migration of plants growing in the lowlands and about the
+      bases and sides of mountains, and not suggest some means of transport for
+      the equally beautiful flora, known as "alpine," on the mountain summits of
+      the earth? These are distributed, as we have before shown, over all our
+      mountain systems, in all latitudes and in all parts of the globe, as well
+      as in the higher regions of vegetation as we approach the north pole.
+      Surely, the delicate little harebells of these alpine regions should
+      attract some interest, if not sympathy, from those who are constantly
+      hunting up means of transport for the more hardy and robust plants that
+      seem able to take care of themselves almost anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon
+      these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There
+      is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the
+      rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the
+      lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and
+      far-distant alpine homes? They can never, of course, get very far away
+      from the regions skirted by eternal frost, for their cup of joy must be
+      chaliced by the snow-flake, or their beautiful life is soon ended. But if
+      all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have
+      been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross
+      the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions
+      of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and
+      explain. Not that we want any explanation, but that their theory of
+      plant-migration stands sadly in need of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory which the Bible genesis suggests to us is fully adequate to the
+      explanation wanted. It explains not only <i>why</i> these alpine flora
+      appear where they do, but why they cannot appear anywhere else. It also
+      explains all the physiological facts to which we have referred in the
+      foregoing chapters. Wherever the necessary alpine conditions exist the
+      earth responds to the divine command, and the beautiful little alpine
+      harebell is cradled into life, and rejoices in the bright embroidery it
+      wears. And so, wherever streams are turned aside to flow through new meads
+      and sheltered woods, or over broken and swaly places where cowslips never
+      grew before, hardly a year will pass before this "wan flower" will hang
+      therein "its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the
+      black alder will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far
+      its current may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the
+      supply of natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate
+      her as "instinct with music and <i>the vital spark</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If our botanical professors would come forth into the true light of
+      nature, they should accept the position of pupil to her, and not assert
+      that of teacher. So long as they continue to peep and botanize upon her
+      grave, or over ancient mounds and Hadrianic tumuli, they will never find
+      out the cunning of her processes, much less the means she employs to
+      accomplish her perfected ends. This modern idolatry of "hypotheses," with
+      our chronic neglect of what nature <i>does</i>, is the great scientific
+      stumbling-block of the age in which we live. Our botanists all agree that
+      certain plants and trees disappear--hopelessly die out--from the <i>absence</i>
+      of "necessary conditions;" when will they come to recognize the reverse of
+      this undeniable proposition, and agree that the <i>presence</i> of
+      necessary conditions may cause the same plants and trees to make their
+      appearance, that is, spring into life in obedience to some great primal
+      law, as unerringly obeyed by nature as the attractive force of the
+      universe itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical
+      distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British
+      Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As
+      early as 1835, Mr. Hewett Watson, a well-known botanist of that day, in
+      his published "Remarks on the Geographical Distribution of Plants, in
+      connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate," drew the attention of
+      the botanical world to this remarkable feature of plant distribution;
+      while the late Professor Edward Forbes pursued the same line of thought in
+      his attempt to show how geographical changes had affected plant areas in
+      Great Britain as far back as the last glacial drift. And yet all our
+      botanical writers have been steadily persisting on immense
+      plant-migrations to account for their geographical distribution, and have
+      given us maps without number to show how the vegetal hosts have traversed
+      vast continents, swam multitudinous seas, braved the fiery equator, and
+      scaled the summits of the loftiest Andes. In the mean time, no botanist of
+      any distinguished note, except M. De Candolle, has confidently ventured to
+      question this migration theory, so imposing and formidable has been the
+      array of names which have frowned down, like so many gigantic ghauts, upon
+      the audacious questioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the present actual state of knowledge on this subject forbids us any
+      longer to accept theories for facts, premises for conclusions, or
+      fallacious reasoning for legitimate induction. Truth and daylight never
+      meet in a corner, and no one, in our day, need go to the bottom of a well
+      in search of either. We are forever stumbling over the truth without
+      knowing it, because our old traditional beliefs, like so many
+      superannuated grasshoppers, are constantly springing up in our path and
+      diverting our attention from her. There are physiological facts enough
+      daily obtruding themselves upon our attention, if we would but notice
+      them, in the case of wayside plants, garden and household weeds, and the
+      more aggressive vegetation of worn out pasture-lands, to satisfy us of the
+      truth of our theory, were it not for the swarms of these old traditional
+      grasshoppers continually rising into the air before us, and shutting out
+      the truth as it is in nature. And the worst feature about this whole
+      business is, that we have come to regard these multitudinous insects as a
+      delight instead of a burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is hardly necessary to pursue this subject further. We have shown,
+      or shall show in the succeeding pages, that all crystalline forms come
+      from necessary or favoring statical conditions; that all infusorial forms
+      come in the same way, only their conditions may be said to be dynamical
+      rather than statical; that all mycological forms (fungi) are dependent,
+      for their primary manifestation, on conditions of moisture and decay; that
+      all plant-life, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer, is
+      dependent on some similar incidence of conditions; that the mastodon, now
+      only known by his fossil remains, must have wallowed forth from his
+      "necessary mire" (plasmic conditions) in the Eocene period; and that all
+      animal life must have come from some underlying law of primordial
+      conditions, as impressed upon matter, in harmony with the "Divine
+      Intendment" from the beginning; and that this law is still operative in
+      the production of new forms of life whenever and wherever the same may
+      appear. We shall also show that all living organisms, such as seeds,
+      fungus-spores, morphological cells, etc., perish at a temperature of about
+      100&deg; C., and that <i>Bacteria, Torul&aelig;</i>, and other infusorial
+      forms, making their appearance in super-heated flasks, originate not from
+      morphological cells, plastide particles, bioplasts, or any other vital
+      organism, but from indestructible vital units, which are everywhere
+      present in the organic matter of our globe, and ready to burgeon forth
+      into life whenever the necessary vital conditions exist, and the proper
+      incidences of environment occur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have also shown that the earth still obeys the divine command to bring
+      forth, or--if objection be made to this form of statement as
+      unscientific--still obeys some inexorable underlying law tantamount to
+      such command, and can no more help "bringing forth," when the necessary
+      telluric conditions favor, than the cold can help coming out of the north,
+      or the clouds dropping rain, when the necessary meteorological conditions
+      occur. Give the future American botanist the physical geography of a
+      country--its average rain-fall, temperature, etc., and the plant zone in
+      which it lies, and, whether explored or unexplored, he will give us the
+      general character of its vegetation, and name most of the plants and trees
+      peculiar to its soil. And he will do this, not because he has any faith in
+      the present theories of plant-migration, nor in the necessary distribution
+      of seeds, but because he will study his favorite science with reference to
+      latitude, elevation, climate, physical characteristics, rain-fall,
+      soil-constituents, and other influencing conditions of plant-life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for
+      the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing,
+      if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data
+      for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the
+      evolutionists have been spinning for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our geologic and paleontologic records are becoming richer in materials,
+      more interesting in details, and more authentic in character, every year.
+      We are turning back page after page of these lithographic records, only to
+      find the domain of science widened and deepened in interest as we advance,
+      or as our rocks are being excavated, our mountains tunneled, our vast
+      mines explored, and the beds of our rivers and arms of seas thoroughfared
+      and traversed by the iron rail. Meanwhile, science exhibits signs of
+      becoming less devoted to new-fangled theories, more exacting in her
+      demands upon her votaries, and more eager to extend the domain of facts as
+      the only true basis on which to rest her claims for future recognition.
+      She is less dogmatic to-day than she was a year ago, and is likely to
+      become less so a year hence than now. And this is largely due to her
+      methods of research and inquiry. She is now everywhere sending out her
+      hardier and more enthusiastic sons into new fields of exploration, to
+      return laden with ampler materials to build, and richer treasures to
+      adorn, a temple worthy of her name. In the field of the fossilized fauna
+      and flora, these treasures are of the highest value and interest, all
+      indicating not only wide areas of distribution, but immense periods of
+      time, in which species have existed without any greater changes in
+      character than the necessary shadings into varieties would seem to
+      require. For nature everywhere characterizes her methods of production and
+      reproduction by a loving tendency to diversify and variously adorn her
+      species, as if to express the infinite conceptions of that power above
+      her, which "spake and it was done, which commanded and it was brought
+      forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the fossilized plants of Atanekerdluk--a flora rich in species and
+      wonderfully preserved in type--and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to
+      the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached
+      out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as
+      avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized
+      forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period--one so
+      remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may
+      be measured by geologic periods. And these materials show that varieties
+      of the <i>Sequoia</i>, the tulip-tree, oaks, beeches, walnuts, firs,
+      poplars, hazelnuts, etc., etc., all flourished in these sub-arctic regions
+      during the far-distant period we have named. Many of them must have grown
+      on the spot where their trunks are now to be found, as their roots remain
+      undisturbed in the soil, as well as at a time when these regions enjoyed a
+      warm or cold temperate climate. Many of these fossilized and carbonized
+      forms are identical with the living species of to-day, conclusively
+      showing that neither natural variation, nor any secondary causes, have
+      worked out any changes capable of being scientifically expressed in
+      genetic value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is also abundant evidence to show that many of the present tropical
+      forms flourished in central and southern Europe as far back as the warm
+      inter-glacial epoch in the Eocene period. And if these inter-glacial
+      periods occurred at the lowest minimum limits of eccentricity in the
+      earth's orbit, as calculated by Leverrier's formul&aelig;, we can have no
+      conception whatever of the length of time actually intervening the period
+      named and our present era. Mr. Croll has given us the limits of highest
+      glaciation covering the last three million years, and shows that there
+      have been but two periods of superior eccentricity in that time, and can
+      be only one in the next million years, with but two or three intervening
+      maxima and minima that may, or may not have been, of any special value. It
+      is true that he assigns importance to these maxima, as affecting possible
+      glaciations, but there are other eminent astronomers and physicists who
+      differ from him, and really attach little or no importance to these of any
+      other intervening periods of eccentricity. If Mr. Croll is correct in his
+      theory and estimates, we must separate these superior glacial epochs by an
+      interval of not less than one million seven hundred thousand years; and
+      nearly three of these periods must have intervened since some of the
+      present tropical forms flourished in Europe. And if these forms have
+      undergone no specific change in all this time, how many years will it
+      require to work out even <i>one</i> of Mr. Darwin's many evolutional
+      changes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kinship between some of these arctic and sub-arctic fossilized flora
+      and the living forms of to-day, is so near that they cannot be
+      distinguished by a single difference. This is true of some of the
+      varieties of the <i>Sequoia</i> family, the oaks, beeches, firs,
+      hazelnuts, etc., while others are so nearly identical that it would be
+      difficult to classify them as separate varieties. At all events, if they
+      cannot be placed in the list of identical species, they cannot be ruled
+      out of representative types. But why should our speculative botanists
+      insist upon these "evolutional changes" in plant-life--these "derivative
+      forms" of which they are constantly speaking? Paleontological botany has
+      given us the very highest antiquity of species, and the most that can be
+      claimed is that nature was just as prolific of diversified forms millions
+      of years ago as now. Because we, by forcing nature into unnatural, if not
+      repugnant, alliances, can produce
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        --"Streak'd gillyflowers,<br /> Which some call nature's bastards."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      it is no evidence that she commits any such offence against herself. Her
+      alliances are all loving ones. She indulges in no forced methods of
+      propagation. If she produced the <i>Sequoia gigantea</i>, or the great
+      redwood tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous
+      period, she has propagated it ever since according to her own loving
+      methods, and it is idle to talk of the <i>Sequoia Langsdorfii</i> as being
+      the original ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of
+      the sequoias. How much more rational the suggestion of Professor Agassiz
+      that these trees--the entire family of sequoias--were quite as numerous in
+      individual varieties at first as now, and that the fruit of the one can
+      never bear the fruit of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, take the still hardier and more numerous branches of the <i>Quercus</i>
+      or oak family. M. De Candolle has expended a vast deal of ingenuity to
+      show that the various members of this old and ancestrally-knotty family
+      have all descended from two or three of the hardier varieties. He arrives
+      at this conclusion from a geographical survey of what he would call the
+      "whole field of distribution," and "the probable historical connection
+      between these congeneric species." But science should deal with as few
+      probabilities as possible, especially where experience furnishes no guide
+      to certainty, and only the remotest clue to likelihood. We should never
+      predicate probabilities except on some degree of actual evidence, or some
+      likelihood of occurrence, falling within the limits, analogically or
+      otherwise, of human observation and experience. In no other way can we
+      determine whether an event is probable or not. But here we have not so
+      much as a probable experience to guide us. Geographical distribution in
+      the past is hardly a safe criterion to go by, because we can never be
+      absolutely certain that we have the requisite data on which to form a
+      determinate judgment. The <i>Quercus robur</i> may furnish the maximum
+      test to-day, but a few concealed pockets of nature may bring some other
+      variety of the congeneric species to the front to-morrow, requiring M. De
+      Candolle to correct his classification. There are no less than
+      twenty-eight varieties of this one species of oak, all of them conceded to
+      be spontaneous in origin, and it has been on the earth quite as long as
+      the more stately tribe of Sequoias. Besides, not more than one
+      twenty-thousandth part of the earth's surface has been dug over to
+      determine the extent to which any one of its varieties has flourished in
+      the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since these several varieties are only one degree removed from each other,
+      M. De Candolle supposes divergence to be the natural law which has
+      governed their growth, and not hereditary fixity. But here again he has
+      only remote probabilities to work upon, no absolute data. We are still
+      speaking of his fossilized herbaria, not his modern specimens. These may
+      show a large number of genetically-connected individuals, or those claimed
+      to be so connected. And yet no naturalist can be certain that, because
+      they exhibit similarly marked characteristics, the one ever descended from
+      the other; for the universal experience-rule still holds good that "like
+      engenders like," and we search in vain for anything more than a similarity
+      of <i>idea</i>, or logical connection, which justifies a recognition of
+      the <i>individuorum similium</i> in Jessieu's definition of species. But
+      similarity must not be mistaken for absolute likeness, which nowhere
+      exists in nature. Infinite diversity is the law, absolute identity the
+      rarest possible exception. No two oak leaves, for instance, in a million
+      will be found actually alike, although taken from the same tree, or trees
+      of the same variety; and the same may be said of the segmentation and
+      branching of their limbs, as well as the striatures of their corticated
+      covering, <i>Et sic de similibus</i> everywhere, and with respect to every
+      thing. Nature is more solicitous of diversity and beauty, than of
+      similarity and tameness of effect, in all her landscape pictures; and the
+      Platonic conception that "contraries spring from contraries," may be only
+      a supplementary truth to that of <i>de similibus</i>. In the eye of the
+      soul all objective existences are discerned in their logical order, or as
+      consecutive thoughts of the Divine mind, as outspoken in the material
+      universe. To insist upon cutting down these transcendental forms[<a
+      href="#foot20">20</a>] into the smallest possible number of similar or
+      identical forms, may be all well enough to accomplish scientific
+      classification; but the productive power of nature can never be limited by
+      these mental processes of our own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently
+      enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in
+      speaking of the <i>Quercus robur</i> and its probable origin, says that it
+      is "traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks
+      eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores." By "far-distant
+      shores," he undoubtedly means Northwest America, where its remotest
+      descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the
+      Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats
+      on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after
+      the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The
+      spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia
+      was just as probable, under favoring conditions--though occurring
+      subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent--as that of
+      the miniature forests of "samphire," or small saline plants, which
+      spontaneously made their appearance about the salt-works of Syracuse, when
+      conditions actually favored. The high antiquity of the oak makes no
+      difference in respect to the principle of dispersion, since geographical
+      conditions are what govern, and not the theoretical considerations of the
+      speculative botanist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they
+      "have come into existence coincident both in time and place with pre&euml;xisting
+      closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as individual
+      localization is concerned. But it proves nothing in the way of original
+      progeny, nor can we, by any actual data before us, satisfactorily
+      determine, under this formula, which of the two closely-allied species
+      preceded the other. If they came coincidently, both in time and place,
+      their existence must have been concurrent, not separated by pre&euml;xistence.
+      The formula may be true to this extent, that the conditions favoring the
+      appearance of one species may have equally favored what we call a
+      closely-allied species. But even in this case, the material sequence is
+      lost, and we have nothing to express a relationship as from parent to
+      progeny. For, however restricted as to localization, each species
+      preserves its own characteristics, the similarities always being less than
+      the dissimilarities. These, and other equally conclusive facts of
+      observation, led Professor Agassiz to question any necessary genetic
+      connection between the different species, or between even the same
+      species, in widely-separated localities; his idea being precisely that
+      advanced by us in connection with the Bible genesis, that localization
+      depended on geographical conditions, not on the migration of plants or the
+      dispersion of seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The actual geographical distribution of species--any species--does not
+      depend solely on lines of ancestry, however great their persistence of
+      specific characters; nor on any principle of natural selection, nor on the
+      possibility of fertile monstrosities, but on the simple incidence of
+      conditions; and M. De Candolle, in his "Geographie Botanique," virtually
+      concedes this, while treating of geographical considerations in connection
+      with distribution. He in fact says, in so many words, that the actual
+      distribution of species in the past "seems to have been a consequence of
+      preceding conditions." [<a href="#foot21">21</a>] And he is forced to this
+      conclusion by his virtual abandonment of plant-migration, and the alleged
+      means of seed-distribution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question after all, says Professor Gray, is not "how plants and
+      animals originated, but how they came to exist where they are, and what
+      they are." On only one of these points--that of favoring conditions--can
+      any satisfactory answer be given, except as we defer to the Bible genesis,
+      which explains all. And the reason is, that we can never determine what
+      forms are specific without tracing them back to their origin, and this is
+      impossible. Orders, genera, species, etc., are only so many lines of
+      thought on which we arrange our classifications, just as the parallel
+      wires of an abacus, with their sliding balls, are the lines on which we
+      make our mathematical computations. Agassiz would not allow that varieties
+      existed in nature, except as man's agency effected them, that is, as they
+      were brought about by artificial processes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These artificial processes are quite numerous, and many of them have been
+      practised from remote antiquity. But they seem to have no counterpart in
+      nature, except as insects may contribute to modifications by the
+      distribution of pollen. But all modifications of this character tend
+      towards infertility, while few plants accept any fertilizing aid from
+      other and different species. Any break in their hereditary tendencies,
+      resulting in a metamorphosis that involves the integrity of their stamens
+      and pistils, is stoutly resisted by nature. In considering the question of
+      species, therefore, we should confine our observations to those produced
+      by natural, not artificial, methods; to plants as propagated by the loving
+      tendencies of nature, not by the arbitrary and exacting methods of
+      man--those looking to his gratification only. All these fall into the
+      category, of "nature's bastards," as Shakespeare happily defines them. In
+      view of these considerations, and the new methods of classification, such
+      as grouping genera into families or orders, and these into sub-orders,
+      tribes, sub-tribes, etc., we can readily understand why the great Harvard
+      Professor should have wholly eliminated community of descent from his idea
+      of "species," or hesitated to regard varieties otherwise than as the
+      result of man's agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the whole question of species, as well as varieties, is likely to
+      undergo material modifications in the future. On some points the botanists
+      and zoologists differ widely already, many making likeness among
+      individuals a secondary consideration, and genealogical succession the
+      absolute test of species. Others, on the contrary, make resemblance the
+      fundamental rule, and look upon habitual fecundity within hereditary
+      limits as provisional, or answering to temporary needs only. These
+      differences of opinion would seem to be the more tenaciously held as the
+      question of new varieties presses for solution at the hands of nature,
+      rather than by the agency of man. All these varieties tend less to new
+      races than to cluster about type-centres, and can go no further than
+      certain fixed limits of variation, beyond which all oscillations cease.
+      But none of these questions touch the real marrow of the controversy as to
+      origin, or aid us in determining the duration of species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The presence of the two great families of trees--the sequoias and the
+      oaks--as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the
+      Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that
+      no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three
+      million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million
+      years, except that the <i>Sequoia gigantea</i> may drop out, from the
+      vandalism of man or the next glacial drift.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Ch. Martins, in his "Voyage Botanique &eacute;n Norwege," says "that
+      each species of the vegetable kingdom is a kind of thermometer which has
+      its own zero." It may also be said to have its hygrometric and telluric
+      gauges, or instruments to determine the necessary conditions of moisture
+      and soil-constituents. When the temperature is below zero, the
+      physiological functions of the plant are suspended, either in temporary
+      hybernation or death. And so when the hygrometric gauge falls below the
+      point of actual sustentation, the plant shrinks and dies; while, without
+      the necessary conditions, it would never have made its appearance. There
+      was nothing more imperative in the command for the earth to bring forth
+      than the necessary conditions on which plant-life depended in the first
+      instance, and still depends, as we have endeavored to show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. J.G. Cooper, in an interesting article prepared by him at the expense
+      of the Smithsonian Institute, on the distribution of the forests and trees
+      of North America, with notes and observations on the physical geography,
+      climate, etc., of the country, after classifying, arranging, and
+      tabulating the results of the various observations forwarded to that
+      institution, indulges in the following general observations: "We have with
+      a tropical summer a tropical variety of trees, but chiefly of northern
+      forms. Again, with our arctic winters, we have a group of trees, which,
+      though of tropical forms, are so adapted to the climate as to lose their
+      leaves, like the northern forms, in winter. But, here, it must be
+      distinctly understood, is no alteration <i>produced</i> by climate. Trees
+      are made for and not <i>by</i> climate, and they keep their
+      characteristics throughout their whole range, which with some extends
+      through a great variety of climate." The italics are the authors, and we
+      suppose he means by "tropical" and "arctic," the sub-tropical and
+      sub-arctic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In making his general observations, he had before him large collections of
+      the leaves, fruits, bark, and wood of trees from all parts of the United
+      States, including portions of Mexico, the Canadas and Alaska, and
+      extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But one of the most important
+      elements--in fact, the <i>most</i> important--is wanting in the tables
+      before us, and that is, the elevation at which these thousands of
+      specimens were obtained. So great an oversight as this should not have
+      occurred, although it may not have been entirely Dr. Cooper's fault. He
+      had his materials to work upon, and may have done the best that any one
+      could with them. And yet it is just as important to know at what <i>elevation</i>
+      a particular tree grows in its own plant zone, as to know whether it comes
+      from a sub-arctic or sub-tropical region.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was not the comment we designed to make. Dr. Cooper labors, with
+      most professional botanists, under the delusion that all our plants and
+      trees originated in some one "centre of creation," at some period or other
+      in time and place, and have been steadily spreading themselves outward
+      from that centre until they occupy their present areas of distribution. We
+      have no objection to his clinging to this superannuated faith and belief,
+      if he derives any pleasure in flushing up these "traditional
+      grasshoppers." But we have a right to insist that he shall be logical. He
+      wants it distinctly understood that trees are made <i>for</i>, and not <i>by</i>,
+      climate. Then his "centre of creation" should be everywhere, not a
+      localized one. For he insists that no alteration can be produced by
+      climate, but that the characteristics of each specific form are preserved
+      throughout its entire range of distribution. But if these nomadic and
+      migratory forms have wandered thus far from their centres of creation, it
+      would seem that the trees had either adapted themselves to the climate, or
+      the climate to the trees. But our Smithsonian systematizer will allow us
+      neither horn of this dilemma. He insists that the trees were made for the
+      climate, and that they have preserved their characteristic features during
+      their entire ambulation upon the earth's surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the change of a single monosyllabic predicate, this proposition is
+      undoubtedly true. We have never heard that plants or trees were "made."
+      They were ordered "to grow," or rather the earth was commanded to bring
+      them forth, which is an equivalent induction. And the fact that they grow
+      now, renders it absolutely certain that they grew at first, when "out of
+      the ground made the Lord God <i>to grow</i>" every plant of the field, and
+      every tree that is pleasant to the sight. We accept this genesis for the
+      want of a better. And if Dr. Cooper will add to his climatic conditions,
+      the hygrometric and other conditions necessary for the development and
+      growth of his plants and trees, we will agree with him to the fullest
+      extent of his novel position--that trees neither adapt themselves to the
+      climate, nor the climate to the trees; although it is true that trees
+      modify climate quite as much as they are modified by it. The true
+      physiological formula is undoubtedly this:--Trees make their appearance <i>in</i>
+      climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without material
+      change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor. <i>Why</i>
+      they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we
+      assume a pre&euml;xisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation
+      our subtlest dialectical methods. We are told that God commanded the earth
+      to bring them forth, after <i>his</i> spirit (the animating soul of life)
+      had moved upon the face of the depths--the chaotic and formless mass of
+      the earth in the beginning. Plato has uttered no profounder or more
+      comprehensive truth than this, with all his conceptions of Deity and the
+      perfect archetypal world after which he conceived our own to be modeled.
+      Our preference for the Bible genesis over the Platonic conception is, that
+      it is vastly simpler and constitutes a more objective reality to the human
+      soul. Besides, we find <i>it true in fact</i>, since the earth is
+      constantly teeming with life, as if in obedience to some great primal law
+      impressed upon matter by an infinitely superior intelligence to our own.--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "If this faith fail,<br /> The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,<br /> And
+        earth's base built on stubble."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="07"></a>Chapter VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      What Is Life? Its Various Theories.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The question, "What is life?" does not lie within the province of human
+      reason, the science of logic, or the intuitions of consciousness, to
+      determine. It furnishes no objective <i>datum</i> on which to predicate
+      attributes that are either congruent or diverse. It can only be defined as
+      the coordination of the <i>vis vitae</i> in nature, which is an
+      undisguised form of reasoning in a circle. We can ascribe to it only such
+      attributes as are utterly inconceivable in any other concept or object of
+      thought. It admits of but one attribution, and that embracing an identical
+      proposition. To say of life that it is "a co&ouml;rdination of action,"
+      might be true as a partial judgment, but not as a comprehensive one;
+      otherwise, crystallization would fall under its category, which is
+      manifestly an illicit induction. It allows, therefore, of no possible
+      explication, analysis, or separate logical predicament. It stands
+      absolutely alone and apart by itself--a positive, self-subsistent vital
+      principle, or process of action, which all physiologists agree, for the
+      sake of convenience and uniformity of expression, in designating as a <i>power,
+      property, force</i>, etc., in nature. Whenever questioned as to its origin
+      the subtlest and profoundest intellects, in all ages of the world, have
+      returned but one answer: "I know no possible origin but God"--the great
+      primal source of all life in the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the ancients we find an almost equivalent induction in the phrases,
+      borrowed by them from the highest antiquity, "<i>Jupiter est genitor</i>,"
+      "<i>Jupiter est quodcunque vivit</i>," etc., which, although uninspired
+      utterances, strike their roots deeply into the <i>terra incognita</i> of
+      consciousness, wherein we ascribe to God the "issues of life" as a
+      paramount theological conception. When the ingenious and learned Frenchman
+      defined life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted,"
+      he was as conclusively indulging in the <i>argumentum in circulo</i> as if
+      he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be
+      as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of
+      Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement <i>x-y</i> the antithesis of <i>x+y</i>--one
+      of no definitional value so long as there is no known quantity expressed
+      in the formula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To begin with begging the question, and then adroitly whipping the
+      argument about a pivotal point, as a boy would whip a top, may be amusing
+      enough to the childish mind, but is manifestly making no more progress in
+      logic than to substitute an ingenious paraphrase of a term for its real
+      definition. It is a mere verbal feat at best, without the possibility of
+      reaching any determinate judgment. It is like some of the half-circular
+      phrases we are likely to meet with in the categories of modern
+      materialistic science, such as the "correlated correlates of motion," the
+      "potentiated potentialities of sky-mist," the "undifferentiated
+      differentialities of life-stuff," called, by special condescension on the
+      part of the materialists, "life." All of which is an easy logic, but a
+      whimsical enough way of putting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Leibnitz, everything that exists is replete with life, full
+      of vital activity, if not an actual mass of living individualities. But
+      this daring hypothesis has ceased to attract the attention it once
+      received. There are states and conditions of matter in respect to which it
+      is idle to predicate the <i>vis vitae</i>. For the great bulk of our globe
+      is made up of the highly crystallized and non-fossiliferous rocks, which
+      neither contain any elementary principle of life, nor exhibit the
+      slightest trace of vital organism, even to the minutest living speck or
+      plastid. During all those vast periods of uncomputed time, covering the
+      world's primeval history, there was an utter absence of life until the
+      chief upheavals of the outer strata of our globe, now constituting the
+      principal mountain chains of its well-defined continents, occurred. In
+      whatever atomic or molecular theories, therefore, we may indulge, in
+      respect to the original formation of the earth, the utmost stretch of
+      empirical science can go no further, in the solution of vital problems,
+      than to touch the threshold of inorganic matter, where, in our backward
+      survey of nature, vegetable life begins and animal life ends. All beyond
+      this point must be given up to other "correlates of motion" than those to
+      which the materialists specifically assign the beginnings of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory of "panspermism," originating with the Abb&eacute; Spallanzani
+      in modern times, and still stoutly advocated by M. Pasteur and some few
+      others, is manifestly defective in this,--that it goes beyond the
+      inorganic limit in assigning vital units to all matter, even to its
+      elemental principles. It is true that they speak of "pre-existing
+      germs"--"primordial forms of life"--that are "many million times smaller
+      than the smallest visible insect." But their assumptions go far beyond the
+      construction we give to the Bible genesis, which merely asserts that the
+      germinal principle of life--that of every living thing--is in the earth,
+      or in "the waters and the earth," which were alone commanded "to bring
+      forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the panspermists have gone so far as to assert that everything
+      which exists is referable to the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>--to non-corporeal,
+      yet extended vital units, mere metaphysical points--like Professor Beale's
+      bioplasts in the finer nerve-reticulations--or living things endowed with
+      a greater or less degree of perceptive power. This was the assumption of
+      the great German philosopher, Leibnitz, who carried the panspermic theory
+      so far as to accept the more fanciful one of "monads"--those invisible,
+      ideal, and purely speculative units of Plato, which go to make up the
+      entire universe, extending even to the ultimate elements, or elements of
+      elements. Leibnitz says: "As it is with the human soul, which sympathizes
+      with all the varying states of nature--which mirrors the universe--so it
+      is with the monads universally. Each--and they are infinitely numerous--is
+      also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm: everything that is,
+      or happens, is reflected in each, but by its own spontaneous power,
+      through which it holds ideally in itself, as in a germ, the totality of
+      things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the specific germ theory advanced in the Bible genesis, is capable of
+      being taken out of the purely speculative region in which "panspermism"
+      landed the great German philosopher. It is a simple averment that the
+      animating principle of life is in the earth; that the germs of all living
+      things, vegetal and animal alike, are implanted therein, and that they
+      make their appearance, in obedience to the divine command, whenever and
+      wherever the necessary environing conditions occur. The fact that nature
+      still obeys this command is proof that she has the power to do so--that
+      this indestructible vital principle still animates her breast. Innumerable
+      experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis
+      of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent
+      materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm
+      rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in
+      this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a
+      scientific statement. Granting that panspermism may rest upon a purely
+      fanciful and unsubstantial basis, it is but fair to concede that its great
+      advocates have honestly attempted to explain by it all the vital phenomena
+      occurring in nature, as M. Pasteur is conclusively attempting to do now.
+      It is certain that the materialists, who are resolutely antagonizing the
+      panspermic, as well as all other "vital" theories, have not yet gone so
+      deeply into elementary substance as to shut off all further investigation
+      in these directions.[<a href="#foot22">22</a>] Neither the lowest
+      primordial cell, nor the least conceivable molecule, has yet been reached
+      by the aid of the microscope, any more than the outermost circle of the
+      heavens has been penetrated by the aid of the telescope. We must stop
+      somewhere, and when we find a scientifically formulated statement which
+      embraces all vital phenomena, and satisfactorily accounts for them all,
+      whether it originally came from Aristotle, from Plato, or from Moses, is a
+      matter of comparatively slight moment, so far as the scientific world is
+      concerned. At least, it would seem so to us. But to talk of the <i>de novo</i>
+      origin of "living matter" as the result of the dynamic force of
+      molecules--themselves concessively "dead matter"--is to indulge in quite
+      as fanciful a speculation as the advocates of the panspermic hypothesis
+      have ever ventured to suggest. Professor Bastian is forced to go back of
+      his infusorial forms and fungus-germs to a microscopical "pellicle," from
+      which he admits they are "evolved." But why evolved? Does not the
+      principle of vitality lie back of the pellicle, as well as the
+      fungus-germ? How absolutely certain is he that the extremest verge of
+      microscopic investigation has been attained, in what he is pleased to
+      designate "primary organic forms?" "Evolution" is a very potential word,
+      and no one may yet know what boundless stores of absurd theory and
+      metaphysical nonsense are locked up in it![<a href="#foot23">23</a>] He
+      admits that "evolution," as embracing the idea of "natural selection," can
+      have nothing to do with the vast assemblage of infusorial and cryptogamic
+      organisms, until they assume definitely recurring forms, that is, rise
+      into species and breed true to nature. Then, he agrees with Mr. Darwin,
+      that the law of vital polarity or "heredity," as he calls it, may come in
+      and play its part towards effecting evolution, or variability, in both
+      animal and vegetal organisms, but not before. Why then should he lug in,
+      or attempt to lug in, the diverse potentialities of this word "evolution,"
+      for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic law governing the
+      developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree,
+      lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or
+      the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this
+      developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of
+      ancestry to be traced anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, Professor Bastian readily concedes, notwithstanding it cuts the
+      Darwinian <i>plexus</i> squarely in the middle. He says: "Both Gruithuisen
+      and Tr&eacute;viranus agree that the infusoria met with have never
+      presented similar characters when they have been encountered in different
+      infusions; nor have they been uniform in the same infusion, when different
+      portions of it have been <i>exposed to the incidence of different
+      conditions</i>. The slightest variations in the quality or quantity of the
+      materials employed, are invariably accompanied by the appearance of
+      different organisms--these being oftentimes strange and peculiar, and
+      unaccompanied by any of the familiar forms." Other writers of equal
+      eminence in this field of investigation have not only observed the same
+      characteristics, but encountered the same difficulties in classification,
+      from the very great diversity obtaining even in the nearest allied forms.
+      So great is this diversity, and so multitudinous the different forms, that
+      little certainty or value can be attached to the classifications already
+      made. Even Professor O.F. M&uuml;ller, after he had convinced himself that
+      he had discovered not less than twelve different species belonging to a
+      single genus, was subjected to the mortification of seeing Ehrenberg cut
+      them all down to mere modifications of one and the same species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We refer to these several statements of fact for the purpose of
+      emphasizing the true genesis of life as supplemented by "the incidence of
+      different conditions," on which all vital manifestations depend. The
+      presence of the germinal principles of life in the earth is emphatically
+      averred in the Bible genesis. And we have only to connect the doctrine of
+      "conditional incidence" with this averment, to account for all the vital
+      phenomena which so profoundly puzzle these gentlemen while prying into the
+      mysteries of the ephemeromorphic world. Whatever may be the character of
+      any infusion, or to whatever incidence of conditions it may be subjected,
+      it will produce <i>some</i> form of life; not because it contains this or
+      that morphological cell, destructible at a temperature of 100&deg; C--that
+      to which it is experimentally subjected before microscopic
+      examination,--but because every organic infusion, whether undergoing the
+      required heat-test or not, contains vital units--those as indestructible
+      by heat as by glacial drift--which burgeon forth into life whenever the
+      proper conditions of environment obtain. The slightest variation, in
+      either the quantity or quality of the material employed in the infusion,
+      is, as these eminent microscopists agree, invariably accompanied by the
+      appearance of different forms of life, just as the slightest change in
+      soil-conditions, such as that produced by the presence of one species of
+      tree with another in natural truffle-grounds, will result in the
+      appearance of another and altogether different plant, as well as truffle
+      tuber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the theory which the vitalists are more particularly called upon to
+      combat is that to which the non-vitalists most rigidly adhere; and we
+      refer to it, in this connection, that the reader may compare its
+      complexity and involution of statement and idea with the extreme
+      simplicity of the biblical genesis, as heretofore presented. We give it in
+      the exact phraseology employed by Professor Bastian: "Living matter is
+      formed by, or is the result of, certain combinations and rearrangements
+      that take place <i>in invisible colloidal molecules</i>--a process which
+      is essentially similar to the mode by which higher organisms are derived
+      from lower in the pellicle of an organic infusion." This carefully-worded
+      definition of life, or the origin of "living matter," presents a
+      hypothetical mode of reasoning which is eminently characteristic of all
+      materialists. In the stricter definitional sense of the word, there is no
+      such thing as "living matter" or "dead matter," as we have before claimed.
+      There are "living organisms" in multitudinous abundance--those resulting
+      <i>from</i>, not <i>in</i>, the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>, or the elementary
+      principle of life in nature--as there are also "dead organisms" in
+      abundance. This materialistic definition of life, which is not so much as
+      a generic one even, begins in an absurdity and ends in one. It is agreed
+      that the "proligerous pellicle" of M. Pouchet, the "plastide particle" of
+      Professor Bastian, the "monas" of O.F. M&uuml;ller, the "bioplast" of
+      Professor Beale, etc., are essentially one and the same thing, except in
+      name. They are mere moving specks, or nearly spherical particles, which
+      exhibit the first active movements in organic solutions. They vary in size
+      from the one hundred-thousandth to the one twenty-thousandth of a second
+      of an inch in diameter, and appear at first hardly more than moving specks
+      of semi-translucent mucus. Indeed, Burdach calls them "primordial mucous
+      layers." But they move, pulsate, swarm into colonies, and act as if they
+      were guided, not by separate intelligence, but by some master-builder
+      supervising the whole work of organic structure. This master-builder is
+      the one "elementary unit of life," which directs the movements of all the
+      plastide particles, constantly adding to their working force, from the
+      first primordial mucous layer of the superstructure to the majestic dome
+      of thought (in the case of man) which crowns the temple of God on earth.[<a
+      href="#foot24">24</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this "pellicle" of Professor Bastian is not mere structureless matter,
+      any more than the "bioplast" of Professor Beale. The fact that they move,
+      pulsate, work in all directions, shows that they have the necessary organs
+      with which to work. These organs may be invisible in the field of the
+      microscope, but that is no proof that they do not exist. Organs are as
+      essential for locomotion in a plastide particle as in a mastodon or
+      megatherium, and if the microscope could only give back the proper
+      response, we should see them, if not be filled with wonder at the
+      marvellous perfection of their structure. But into whatever divisions or
+      classifications we may distinguish or generalize the properties of matter,
+      we can never predicate <i>vitality</i> of it, any more than we can
+      predicate <i>intellectuality</i>. Indeed, "intellectual matter" presents
+      no greater incongruity or invalidity of conception than "vital matter."
+      These qualifying terms are applied to the known laws and forces of nature,
+      not to insensate matter. To assert that life results <i>from</i> "certain
+      combinations and rearrangements of matter," and not <i>in</i> them, is
+      utterly to confound cause and effect, or so incongruously mingle them
+      together that no logical distinction between the two can exist as an
+      object of perception. Without the <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>, or some germinal
+      principle of life, lying back of these "combinations and rearrangements of
+      matter," and determining the movements of their constituent molecules,
+      there could be no vital manifestation, any more than there could be a
+      correlate of a force without the actual existence of the force itself. [<a
+      href="#foot25">25</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The materialists give the name of "protoplasm" to that primitive
+      structureless mass of homogeneous matter in which the lowest living
+      organisms make their appearance. They claim that this generic substance is
+      endowed with the property or power of producing life <i>de novo</i>, or,
+      as Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living
+      matter" which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but
+      whether they die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and
+      more potentially endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those
+      following their diagnoses to determine. They further claim that the same
+      law of vital manifestation obtains in organic solutions as in the
+      structureless mass they call "protoplasm." Both are essentially endowed
+      with the same potentiality of originating life independently of vital
+      units, or <i>de novo</i>, as they more persistently phrase it. But why
+      speak of <i>unfolding</i> "new-born specks of living matter?" "To unfold"
+      means to open the folds of something--to turn them back, get at the
+      processes of their <i>infoldment</i>. It implies a pre-existing something,
+      inwrapped as a germ in its environment. If not a germ, what is this
+      pre-existing vital something which their language implies? Is our
+      scientific technology so destitute of definitional accuracy that they
+      cannot use half a dozen scientific terms without committing half that
+      number of down-right scientific blunders? "New-born specks of living
+      matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by sheer
+      inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian, should
+      trip in this definitional way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Living matter," <i>born</i> of what? Certainly not of <i>dead</i> matter.
+      Death quickens nothing into life, not even the autonomous moulds of the
+      grave. It implies the absence of all vitality--a state or condition of
+      matter in which all vital functions have been suspended, have utterly
+      ceased, if, indeed, they ever existed. It behooves the materialists to use
+      language with more precision and accuracy than this. "Dead matter,"
+      whatever the phrase may imply, can bear nothing, produce nothing, quicken
+      nothing. The pangs of death once past, the pangs of life cease. Nor is
+      there any birth from unquickened matter. Animals <i>bear</i> young, trees
+      <i>bear</i> fruit, but force <i>produces</i> results. What then quickens
+      protoplasmic matter? Neither vital force, nor vegetative force, if we are
+      to credit the materialists. They would scorn to postulate such a theory,
+      or accept any such absurd remnant of the old vitalistic school. It is
+      rather "molecular force"--a physical, not a vital unit--that gives us
+      these "new-born specks of living matter." [<a href="#foot26">26</a>] This
+      is what they would all assert at once, in their enthusiasm to enlighten us
+      on a new terminology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But "molecular force" fails to give us any additional enlightenment on the
+      subject we are investigating. It is even less satisfactory than "atomic
+      force," or "elementary force"--that which may be considered as inhering in
+      the elementary particles from which both atoms and molecules are derived.
+      And since both the ultimate atom and the ultimate molecule lie beyond
+      microscopic reach, the assumption that vital phenomena are the result of
+      either molecular force or atomic force, rests upon no other basis than
+      that of imaginary hypothesis. To postulate any such theory of life, is
+      going beyond the limits of experimental research and inquiry, and hence
+      adopting an unscientific method. At what point the smallest living
+      organism is launched into existence--started on its life-journey--no one
+      is confident enough to assert. The materialist is just as dumb on this
+      subject as the vitalist; and the only advantage he can have over his
+      antagonist is to stand on this extreme verge of attenuated matter, and
+      deny the existence of any force beyond it. The postulation by him of
+      molecular force at this point, is virtually an abandonment of the whole
+      controversy. He ceases to be a materialist the moment he passes the
+      visible boundaries of matter, in search of anything like "undifferentiated
+      sky-mist" beyond it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that we definitely know is that certain conditions of protoplasmic
+      matter, of organic solutions, of soil-constituents, etc., produce certain
+      forms of life; and, in the case of solutions, certain low forms of life:
+      But whether the lower rise, by any insensible gradations, into the higher,
+      more complex, and definitely expressed forms of life, is altogether
+      unknown. That any such gradations can be traced from the lowest vital
+      unit, in the alleged collocations of molecules, is not yet claimed. These
+      primordial collocations, like the lowest living organisms, lie beyond the
+      microscopic aids to vision, so that the ultimate genesis of life remains
+      as much a mystery as ever--becomes, in fact, a mere speculative
+      hypothesis. And when it comes to this sort of speculation, the materialist
+      is just as much in the dark as the vitalist, and neither can have any
+      advantage over the other, except as the one may adopt the analytic, and
+      the other the synthetic method.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the materialistic argument covering the <i>de novo</i> origin of
+      living organisms:--There is no greater microscopical evidence, they
+      assert, that these organisms come from pre-existing invisible germs or
+      vital units, than that crystals are produced in a similar manner--that is,
+      come from pre-existing invisible germs of crystals. But this is
+      overlooking all generic distinction in respect to processes or modes of
+      action. Crystals are inorganic matter which <i>form</i>, do not <i>grow</i>.
+      They are mere symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are
+      produced by some law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of
+      their constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no
+      beginning or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric
+      solids, they remain permanently enduring forms--concessively inorganic,
+      not functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of
+      crystals," is using language that has no appreciable significance to us.
+      Germs are embryonic, and imply a law of growth--a process of assimilation,
+      not of mere aggregation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the
+      materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still
+      insist, between the pre&euml;xisting germs of crystals and plants--or the
+      only difference essentially worth noticing--is that crystalline particles
+      of matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing
+      diversified forms and structural changes than the more highly favored
+      vital particles, such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the
+      plastide, etc. The one represents mere crystallizable matter, the other
+      the more complex colloidal or albuminoid substance, or that capable of
+      producing a much greater number of aggregates. The analogies, they
+      concede, end here. But the difference is world-wide when we come to
+      processes--the true experimental test in all classification.
+      Crystallizable substances <i>crystallize</i>--that is all. They pass into
+      a fixed and immovable state, and mostly into one as enduring as adamant;
+      while colloidal or albuminoid matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no
+      fixed forms--only those that are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so
+      marked a feature, in respect to all the primordial forms of life, that
+      Professor Bastian gives them the more distinctive name of
+      "ephemeromorphs," in place of <i>infusoria</i>. But all these primordial
+      forms grow--develop into vital activity. Not so with a solitary crystal.
+      Everywhere the statical unit <i>forms</i>, the dynamical unit <i>grows</i>;
+      the one aggregates, the other assimilates; the one solidifies, the other
+      opens up into living tissue; the one rests in the embrace of eternal
+      silence, the other breaks the adamantine doors, and makes nature resonant
+      with praise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great stress is laid by the materialists on the changeability of certain
+      microscopic forms, and the startling metamorphoses they apparently undergo
+      in different infusions, especially those forms having developmental
+      tendencies towards fungi and certain low forms of alg&aelig;. They
+      attribute their different modes of branching, articulation, segmentation
+      of filaments, etc., both to intrinsic tendencies and extrinsic causes, the
+      latter depending, no doubt, in a great measure upon the chemical changes
+      constantly taking place in their respective infusions. These intrinsic
+      tendencies, they would have us believe, depend upon the dynamic force of
+      molecules, rather than any vital unit, or even change in elementary
+      conditions. But "Dynamism" simply implies that force inheres in, or
+      appertains to, all material substance, without specifically designating
+      either the quantity or quality of the inhering force. If these
+      materialists, therefore, use the terms "dynamic force," in this
+      connection, in the sense in which we use vital force, or in the sense in
+      which they use "statical force" as applied to the formation of crystals,
+      in contradistinction from "dynamical force" as applied to living
+      organisms, we have no special objection to urge against this particular
+      formula. It presents no such formidable antagonism as the vitalists would
+      expect to encounter from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Dutrochet is approvingly quoted by Professor Bastian, as asserting that
+      he could produce different genera of mouldiness (low mycological forms) <i>at
+      will</i>, by simply employing different infusions. This is unquestionably
+      true, with certain limitations. And the chief limitation is as to <i>his</i>
+      (M. Dutrochet's) will. He might "will," for instance, to plant one field
+      with corn and another with potatoes, but if the husbandman he employed to
+      do the planting should happen to plant the one crop where he had willed to
+      plant the other, and corn should grow where potatoes were planted, and <i>vice
+      versa</i>, then he might be said to have produced corn <i>at will</i>. And
+      so of his infusions. No change in their conditions enabled him to produce
+      one species, much less a genus, of mouldiness in preference to another, by
+      any change in the infusions employed by him. The power which implants life
+      in the mycological world, implants it in every other world, from that
+      without beginning to that without end. And this implanted life is quite as
+      complete in one form as another,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,<br /> As the rapt seraph
+        that adores and burns."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the
+      production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of
+      nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing
+      chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental
+      flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the action
+      of these uniform laws. He will find them operative everywhere, and if he
+      studies them deeply enough, he will find that they are not so much the
+      laws of nature as they are the laws of nature's God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Bastian thinks he has conclusive evidence that what he calls
+      "new-born specks of living matter" are produced <i>de novo</i>, that is,
+      independently of any conceivable germ or germinal principle of life
+      implanted in nature. But he confounds this implanted principle of life
+      with the living organism it produces. His morphological cells, as well as
+      plastide particles, are among these living organisms, as is conclusively
+      shown by his own experiments. These all perish in his super-heated flasks.
+      But the vital principle that produced them--that which becomes germinal
+      under the proper conditional incidences--he can no more destroy by
+      experimentation than he can create a new world or annihilate the old one.
+      His flask experiments, therefore, prove nothing; and all this talk about
+      <i>de novo</i> production is the sheerest scientific delusion. For, were
+      it possible to destroy every plant, tree, shrub, blade of grass, weed,
+      seed, underground root, nut, and tuber to-day, the earth would teem with
+      just as diversified a vegetation as ever to-morrow. A few trees, like the
+      gigantic conifers of the Pacific slope, might not make their appearance
+      again, and some plants might drop out of the local flora; but the <i>Pater
+      omnipotens &AElig;ther</i> of Virgil, would descend into the bosom of his
+      joyous spouse (the earth), and, great himself, mingle with her great body,
+      in all the prodigality, profusion, and wealth of vegetation as before.[<a
+      href="#foot27">27</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these defiant challengers of the vitalists, who refuse us even the
+      right to assume the existence of a special "vital force" in nature, are
+      anything but consistent in their logical deductions. For while they
+      resolutely deny the invasion of vital germs in their experimental flasks,
+      they talk as flippantly of the "germs of crystals," and their presence in
+      saline and other solutions, as if there were no scientific formula more
+      satisfactorily generalized than that establishing their existence. Even
+      Professor Bastian speaks of "germs," in a general sense, as if they
+      thronged the earth, air, water, and even the stratified rocks, in
+      countless and unlimited numbers. But we fail to see that any of his
+      accurately obtained results determine their exclusion from the
+      experimental media employed by him for that purpose. His unit of value is
+      a morphological cell, a derivative organism rather than a primary vital
+      unit; and all organisms are, as we have before said, destructible by heat.
+      Professor Agassiz is pretty good authority for doubting the existence of
+      such a cell. The difficulty of assigning to it any definitional value is,
+      that it lies too near the ultimate implications of matter--those shadowy
+      and inexplicable confines not yet reached--to admit of any scientific
+      explication necessarily resting on objective data. If they mean by "germs"
+      primary organic cells, then none exist in their super-heated infusions,
+      and they are logical enough in rejecting the idea of their invasion. But
+      in assuming the cell to be the ultimate unit of value, is where they trip
+      in attribution, and stumble upon a partial judgment only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only value attaching to their theory of crystalline germs is, that it
+      conclusively establishes the law of uniformity by which all structural
+      forms are determined, whether they originate in organic infusions or
+      inorganic solutions--in protoplasm or protoprism. The crystalline system
+      presents no variability in types, but a rigid adherence to specific forms
+      of definitely determined value. Whatever geometrical figure any particular
+      crystal assumed at first, it has continued to assume ever since, and will
+      forever assume hereafter. As a primary conception of the "Divine
+      Intendment" (to speak after the manner of Leibnitz) it can neither change
+      itself, nor become subject to any law of change, or variability, from
+      eternally fixed types. And this is as demonstrably true of all living
+      types, after reaching the point of heredity, as of the countless
+      crystalline forms that go to make up the principal bulk of our planet. In
+      this light, and as affording this conclusive induction, the crystalline
+      argument of the materialists has its value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The materialists should not too mincingly chop logic over the validity of
+      their own reasoning. If they force upon us their conclusions respecting
+      statical aggregates, or crystalline forms, let them accept the inductions
+      that inevitably follow in the case of dynamical aggregates, or living
+      organisms. Beggars of conditions should not be choosers of conditions, nor
+      should they be al lowed to dodge equivalent judgments where the validity
+      of one proposition manifestly rests upon that of another. If they insist
+      upon the presence of a chemical unit, or, worse still, a crystalline
+      "germ" or unit, in the case of statical aggregations, they are effectually
+      estopped from denying the presence of vital units in dynamical
+      aggregations. And if they further force upon us the conviction that the
+      process of aggregation, when once determined, remains in the one case,
+      eternally fixed and certain, they should not be permitted to turn round
+      and insist that, in the other case, there is nothing fixed and certain,
+      but all is variability, change, uncertainty of specific forms. If vital
+      units have only a hypothetical existence, then chemical units, statical
+      units, and morphological units, should fall into the same categories of
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great deal of needless ingenuity has been wasted, both by the vitalists
+      and materialists, in formulating impossible definitions of life--in
+      attempts to tell us what life is. But Mr. Herbert Spencer is believed, by
+      his many admirers, to have hit upon the precise explanatory phrases
+      necessary to convey its true definitional meaning. He defines it as "<i>the
+      continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations</i>."
+      This definition, when first formulated, was received by all the
+      materialists of Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely
+      perfect. All the phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a
+      nest of them, fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to
+      show that any other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into
+      this prodigious formula of Mr. Spencer. The London "Times" tried its hand
+      on it, but only in a playful way. It said: "All the world, or at least all
+      living things, are nothing but large boxes containing an infinite number
+      of little boxes, one within the other, and the least and tiniest box of
+      all contains the germ,"--the elementary principle of life. But this was
+      hardly a legitimate characterization. A nest of boxes presents no idea of
+      "continuous adjustment," nor are the internal relations of one box
+      adjusted to the external relations of another. The definition is really
+      that of a piece of working machinery--any working machinery--and was
+      designed to cover Mr. Spencer's theory of "molecular machinery" as run by
+      molecular force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the earth presents the most perfect adjustment of internal relations
+      to those that are external, and it continuously presents them. Even the
+      upheaval of its fire-spitting mountains affords the highest demonstration
+      of the adjustment of its inner terrestrial forces to those that are purely
+      external; and much more does it show the adjustment of its internal to its
+      external relations. There is a continuous adaptation of means to ends, of
+      causes to effects, of adjustments to re-adjustments, in respect to the
+      characteristics of the earth's surface--its physical configuration, the
+      distribution of its fluids and solids, its fauna and flora, its
+      hygrometric and thermometric conditions, its ocean, wind, and
+      electro-magnetic currents, and even its meteorological manifestations--all
+      showing a continuous adjustment of interior to exterior conditions or
+      relations. The earth should, therefore, fall under the category of "life,"
+      according to Herbert Spencer's definitional formula. And so should an
+      automatic dancing-jack that is made to run by internal adjustments to
+      external movements or manifestations. There are any number of Professor
+      Bastian's "ephemoromorphs" that do not live half as long as one of these
+      automatic dancing-jacks will run, and so long as they run, the adjustment
+      of their internal to their external relations is continuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The success of Mr. Spencer's definition of "life" encouraged Professor
+      Bastian to try his hand at it, with this definitional result: "Life," he
+      says, "is an unstable collocation of Matter (with a big M), capable of
+      growing by selection and interstitial appropriation of new matter (what
+      new matter?) which then assumes similar qualities, of continually varying
+      in composition in response to variations of its Medium (another big M),
+      and which is capable of self-multiplication by the separation of portions
+      of its own substance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It shall not be our fault if the reader fails to understand this
+      definition--to untwist this formidable formula of life. And we can best
+      aid him by grammatically analyzing its structure. And,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. "Life is capable of growing." We are glad to know this. As a vitalist
+      it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back
+      seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry. We
+      let its "unstable collocation" pass for what it is worth, and stick to our
+      grammatical analysis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. "Life grows--is capable of doing something." This assurance positively
+      encourages us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. "It grows by selection and interstitial appropriation." This is still
+      more encouraging. It emboldens us to take a second step forward. Life, we
+      feel, is increasing in potentiality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. "By appropriation it enables <i>new matter to assume similar qualities
+      to old matter</i>." This makes us more confident than ever; we take
+      another step forward--are half disposed to take two of them. Life is
+      getting to be almost a "potentiated potentiality," to adopt the style of
+      materialistic phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. "It causes matter <i>to continually vary in composition.</i>" Bravo! we
+      unhesitatingly take two steps forward on the strength of this most
+      comforting assurance. Life is assuredly getting the upperhand of Matter
+      (with a big M.) It is no longer a mere "undiscovered correlate of
+      motion"--a hypothetical slave to matter only. It wrestles with it--throws
+      it into the shade. We involuntarily take several more steps forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. "Life is capable of self-multiplication"--has almost a creative
+      faculty. Here we interject a perfect bravura of "bravoes," and, stepping
+      boldly up to the front, demand of Professor Bastian to "throw up the
+      sponge," take a back seat, and there--formulate us a new definition of
+      "life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But our London University materialist is not entirely satisfied with his
+      own definition, or at least with the moral effect of it. He thinks that
+      all these attempts to define life as a non-entity only, tend to keep up
+      the demoralizing idea that it is an actual entity. We entirely agree with
+      him in this conclusion. The infelicity and entire inconclusiveness of the
+      definition he has vouchsafed us can hardly have any other effect. He sees
+      this himself, and hence this foot-note to his great work on
+      Ephemeromorphs: "Inasmuch as no life can exist without an organism, of
+      which it is the phenomenal manifestation, so it seems comparatively
+      useless to attempt to define this phenomenal manifestation alone--and,
+      what is worse, such attempts tend to keep up the idea that life is an
+      independent entity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be objected that our grammatical analysis of the professor's
+      definition of life is unfair, since he manifestly intended that it should
+      cover a "living thing," and not "life" as an abstract, term. Our reply to
+      this is, that he makes no distinction between the two. Life, with him, is
+      simply a phenomenal manifestation. The two are correlative terms; so that
+      his definition of the one must necessarily be the definition of the other,
+      either as an identical or partial judgment. But let us take his definition
+      entirely out of its abstract sense, and run it into the concrete. The able
+      pathological anatomist of the London University college is a "living
+      thing." He is, therefore, presumably a phenomenal manifestation. He is
+      capable of growing, by "selection and interstitial appropriation," in
+      reputation at least, if not in the direction of "an independent entity."
+      His work of twelve hundred pages, covering his laborious delvings into the
+      ephemeromorphic world, is conclusive on this point. As a phenomenal
+      manifestation alone, any attempt to define either him or his professional
+      labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea
+      that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a
+      London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or
+      the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not
+      in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His
+      assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the
+      phenomenal manifestation, is what we propose to deal with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, directly the reverse of this proposition is what is true. An organism
+      cannot exist without life or an independent vital principle in nature, any
+      more than celestial bodies can be held in their place independently of
+      gravitation. The vital principle that organizes must precede the thing
+      organized or the living organism, as the great formative principle of the
+      universe (call it the will of God, gravitation or what you may) must have
+      existed before the first world-aggregation. In logic, we must either
+      advance or fall back--insist upon precedence being given to cause over
+      effect, or deny their relative connection altogether. The organism is the
+      phenomenal manifestation, not the vital principle which organizes it. To
+      say that there can be no <i>manifestation</i> of life without an organism
+      is true; but to assume that the vital principle which organizes is
+      dependent on its own organism for its manifestation is absurd. It would be
+      the lesser fallacy to deny the phenomenal fact altogether, and insist that
+      cause and effect are mere intellectual aberrations, or such absurd mental
+      processes as find no correlative expression in nature, as that embodying
+      the idea of either an antecedent or a consequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Plato lived." He ate, he drank, he talked divinely. He was the occupant
+      of an admirably constructed life-mansion; one that St. Paul would have
+      looked upon as "the temple of God," and all the world would have
+      recognized as a god-like temple. His head was a study for the Greek
+      chisel; none was ever more perfectly modeled, or artistically executed.
+      All agreed in this. And yet it was not the <i>habitat</i> but the <i>habitant</i>
+      that attracted the admiration of the Greek mind; enkindled its highest
+      enthusiasm; drew all the schools of philosophy, about him at once. It was
+      the lordly occupant of the temple, the indwelling <i>Archeus</i>,
+      presiding over all the organic phenomena and directing all the dynamic
+      powers therein, which was so profoundly present in the living Plato. Even
+      Professor Haeckel, of the famous University of Jena, would not deny this,
+      with all that his new terms "ontogeny" and "phylogeny" may imply. When
+      potential life passed over into actual life in the individual Plato, it
+      was not the pabulum that assimilated the man, but the man the pabulum. If
+      this were not so, then the mere potentiality of growing, as in the case of
+      plants and animals, would be all there is to distinguish the phenomenal
+      manifestation of a Plato from that of a mole or a cabbage-stalk. In other
+      words, if the animating principle of life--or, as the Bible has it, the
+      "animating soul of life"--is not what manifests itself in material
+      embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor Haeckel mean by his new
+      term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines of descent in all organic
+      beings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it be a question of mere pabulum, it is altogether <i>mal pos&eacute;</i>.
+      Pabulum is nothing without a pre&euml;xisting "something" to dispose of
+      it. It is not so much as a jelly-mass breakfast for one of Professor
+      Haeckel's "protamoeb&aelig;;" for if it were served up in advance, there
+      would be none of his little non-nucleated jelly-eaters to partake of it,
+      much less any of his "protogenes." As the famous Mrs. Glass would say, in
+      her "hand-book of cookery," if you want a delightful "curry," first catch
+      your hare. But our ingenious professor of Jena dispenses with both the
+      hare and the curry, in serving up his pabulum to the "protamoeb&aelig;."
+      The improvident pabulum "evolves" its own eaters, and then, spider-like,
+      is eviscerated by them, as was Actaeon by his own hounds. As Life,
+      therefore, begins in the tragedy of Mount Cith&aelig;ron, it is to be
+      hoped it will end in the delights of Artemis and her bathing nymphs.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="08"></a>Chapter VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The methods by which the advocates of a purely physical origin of life
+      seek to establish the correctness of their conclusions, are unfortunately
+      not always attended by uniform results in experimentation. They subject
+      their solutions of organic matter to a very high temperature by means of
+      super-heated flasks, the tubes to which are so packed in red-hot materials
+      that whatever air may enter them shall encounter a much greater degree of
+      heat than that indicated by boiling water. At this temperature (100&deg;
+      C--212&deg; F) they assume that all living organisms perish, especially
+      when the solutions containing them have been kept, for the space of
+      fifteen or twenty minutes, at this standard point of heat. But, in the
+      light of all the experiments which have been made in this direction, there
+      is some doubt as to the entire correctness of their assumption. That many,
+      if not most living organisms, perish at a temperature of 100&deg; C, there
+      is little or no doubt; but that there are some which are much more
+      tenacious of life, that is, possess greater vital resistance to heat, is
+      equally unquestionable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Pasteur, for instance, mentions the spores of certain fungi which are
+      capable of germinating after an exposure of some minutes to a temperature
+      of 120&deg; to 125&deg; C. (248-257&deg; F), while the same spores
+      entirely lose their germinating power after an exposure for half an hour
+      or more to a slightly higher temperature. Dr. Grace-Calvert, in a paper on
+      "The Action of Heat on Protoplasmic Life," recently published in the
+      proceedings of the Royal Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are
+      capable of resisting the action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300&deg;
+      F, although exposed therein for half an hour or more. But none of these
+      crucial tests, however diverse in experimental results, really touch the
+      all-important question in controversy. They all relate either to living
+      organisms, or to the seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living
+      indestructible "germs"--invisible vital units--declared to be in the earth
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We use the term "vital unit" in the same restricted sense in which the
+      materialists speak of "chemical units," "morphological units," etc., which
+      they admit are invisible in the microscopic field, and hence they can have
+      no positive information as to their destructibility or indestructibility
+      by heat. That this vital unit lies, in its true functional tendencies,
+      between the chemical and morphological units--manifesting itself in the
+      conditions of the one and resulting in the structural development of the
+      other--is no new or startling theory, but one that has been more or less
+      obscurely hinted at by Leibnitz, and even acknowledged as possible by
+      Herbert Spencer. It is this vital unit that assimilates or aggregates
+      protoplasmic matter into the morphological cell, or the initial organism
+      in a vital structure, or an approach towards structural form.
+      Morphological cells are not therefore "units," considered as the least of
+      any given whole, nor are they mere structureless matter, or any more
+      homogeneous in character than in substance. Different chemical solutions
+      give rise to different morphological cells, as differently constituted
+      soils produce different vegetal growths. Change the chemical conditions in
+      any solution or infusion, and you change the entire morphological
+      character of the infusoria appearing therein.[<a href="#foot28">28</a>]
+      The cells are living organisms springing from vital units, and can no more
+      manifest themselves independently of these units than life can manifest
+      itself independently of an actual organism. And they make their appearance
+      in the proper environing conditions, just as the oak comes from its
+      primordial germ or vital unit in the chemically changed conditions of the
+      soil. Everywhere the vital germ or unit precedes the vital growth as the
+      plant or tree precedes the natural seeds it bears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not only the logical order, but the exact scientific method of
+      vital manifestation and growth. In this truth lies the whole mystery of
+      vegetal and animal life as hitherto manifested on our globe, with the
+      single exception of man whose crowning distinction it was to receive "a
+      living soul." This may be rejected as a scientific statement, but its
+      verification will appear in the very act of its rejection. Pry as deeply
+      as we may into the <i>arcana</i> of nature in search of exact scientific
+      truth, and we shall ultimately land in one or the other of these
+      propositions,--either that nature was originally endowed with some occult
+      and unknown power "to bring forth," which power is either continuously
+      inherent or continuously imparted, or else "specific creation" was the
+      predetermined plan and purpose, with no higher or more specialized animal
+      or vegetal forms than were specifically created in the beginning.
+      Otherwise, we are inevitably forced back, by our mental processes, which
+      we cannot resist, upon an effect without a cause--a physical law of the
+      universe without any conceivable law-giver--an all-pervading,
+      all-energizing principle of matter which must have existed as a cause
+      infinitely anterior to its first effect. And this is forcing language into
+      such crazy and paralytic conclusions as to utterly destroy its efficiency
+      as a vehicle of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To conceive of the existence of the universe, or of any possible law that
+      may be operative therein, without an adequate antecedent cause, is as
+      metaphysically impossible as to conceive of substance without form, space
+      without extension, or a God who has been superceded in the universe by the
+      operation of his own laws. For if the world-ordaining and world-arranging
+      intelligence of the universe has ceased to ordain and arrange,--if all
+      things therein have been left to the operation of fixed and eternally
+      unchangeable laws--then no further supervisional direction is required on
+      the part of either an infinite or a finite intelligence, and our idea of a
+      God must disappear in the paramount induction of a universe which has
+      successfully risen up in insurrection against its own maker and lawgiver,
+      if it has not remorselessly consigned him to some inconceivable limbo
+      outside of the universe itself. But this Titanic, and worse than satanic,
+      insurrection on the part of a universe of matter and motion, is only the
+      conjectural coinage of the human brain--the wild supposition hazarded by
+      the materialistic mind--and fortunately has no conceivable counterpart
+      outside of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its
+      overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human
+      mind--as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable
+      uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or
+      the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. And nature furnishes no
+      greater clue to the one set of phenomena than the other. For when we say
+      that bodies act one upon another by the force of gravity, we are no nearer
+      an explication of the force itself, than we should be were we to allege
+      any corresponding manifestation on the part of the human mind. Kant says;
+      "We cannot conceive of the existence of matter without the forces of
+      attraction and repulsion--the conflict of two elementary forces in the
+      universe;" much less can we have any conception of the elementary forces
+      themselves. Science can, therefore, assign no more conclusive reason for
+      overlooking psychical manifestations than physical phenomena. Nor is the
+      one set of phenomena any more marvellous in its manifestations than the
+      other. They may both furnish food for speculative thought and inquiry, and
+      yet the nearer we get to the ultimate implications of either, the more
+      completely are we lost in Professor Tyndall's "primordial haze," from
+      which he assumes that the universe, and all the phenomenal manifestations
+      therein, originally came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But however rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the
+      scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that
+      will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of
+      God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical
+      universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with
+      the former, in all its conceivable relations, that it can no more exist
+      independently of its correlative, than matter can exist independently of
+      space, or time independently of eternity. [<a href="#foot29">29</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to this view of Leibnitz, all living organisms have their own
+      essence, or essential qualities and characteristics. They have been from
+      all eternity in the "Divine Intendment," and can undergo no changes or
+      modifications which shall make them essentially different from what they
+      were in the beginning, or are now. This is not only true of the "germs"
+      that are "in themselves upon the earth," but of every living thing,
+      whether lying within or beyond the telescopic or microscopic limits. As a
+      law of causation, as well as of consecutive thought, there must be in the
+      order of life (all life) a continuous chain of ideas linking the past to
+      the present, the present to the future, and the future to eternity. But
+      that this continuous chain is dependent on mere physical changes or
+      manifestations, is a logical induction utterly incapable of being
+      exhibited in scientific formul&aelig;. The higher and more satisfactory
+      induction is that which places cause before effect, the Maker before the
+      made, the Creator before the creature, and so on, in the analogical order,
+      till the smallest conceivable "vital unit" is reached in the universe of
+      organic matter. To begin, therefore, with microscopic observation, at a
+      point in the ephemeromorphic world where that optical instrument fails to
+      give back any intelligible answer, and synthetically follow this chain of
+      causation upward and outward to Dr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud of mist," in
+      which it is assumed that all the diversified possibilities and
+      potentialities of the universe once lay latent, may answer the logical
+      necessities of the "Evolution" theory, but will never satisfy the
+      inductive processes of a Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Newton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Tyndall, in speaking of his "fiery-cloud" theory, says: "Many
+      who hold the hypothesis of natural evolution would probably assent to the
+      position (his position) that at the present moment all our philosophy, all
+      our poetry, all our science, all our art,--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and
+      a Da Vinci--are potential in the fires of the sun." But, to be consistent
+      in their inductions, they should proclaim themselves sun-worshippers at
+      once, and ascribe to that transcendent luminary all the potentialities of
+      a universe
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fresh-teeming from the hand of God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what possible advantage, we would ask, can this physical hypothesis of
+      life have over that which ascribes to God the issues of all life in the
+      universe, from the highest to the lowest living organism? We can
+      positively conceive of none but that of placing the cosmological cart
+      before the horse, and so harnessing "cause and effect" <i>in tandem</i>,
+      that the latter shall uniformly precede the former in the chain of logical
+      induction. As a dialectical feat, in exhibiting the higher possibilities
+      of logic, it may have its advantages in subordinating the facts of science
+      to the higher illuminations of fancy, and thus resting the basis of
+      reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human
+      mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday,
+      nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are
+      almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope,
+      although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and
+      proportions of that scientific toy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Bastian, in considering the heterogenetic phenomena of "living
+      matter," is obliged to fall back, near the end of his great work, on "the
+      countless myriads of living units which have been evolved (?) in the
+      different ages of the world's history." But by what process a "vital unit"
+      can be <i>evolved</i>, he does not condescend to tell us. He has no
+      "primordial formless fog" to fall back upon as has Professor Tyndall, nor
+      can he imagine anything beyond the least of possible conceptions in a
+      chemical, morphological, or vital unit. A "unit" can neither be evolved
+      nor involved; it admits of no square, no multiple, no differentiation; it
+      is simply the ever-potent unit of "organic polarity," by which it
+      multiplies effects, but can never be multiplied itself. The chief fault
+      that we have to find with the London University professor is that he
+      confounds a morphological cell with a morphological unit, and insists upon
+      drawing unwarrantable conclusions therefrom. His "countless myriads of
+      living units" are all well enough in their way. That they exist in the
+      earth, and are constantly developed into innumerable multitudes of living
+      organisms, of almost inconceivable variety, in both the animal and vegetal
+      world, is true, as he half-reluctantly admits in almost the identical
+      language we here use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he also admits that morphological cells, when once formed, continue to
+      grow by their own individual power or inherent tendency. But before they
+      can manifest any such inherent tendency, they must be developed from the
+      vital units that lie back of them, and on which their manifestation
+      unquestionably depends. The only doubt that can possibly exist on this
+      point is, that the process of development cannot be determined by
+      microscopic examination. But we may as well assume the presence of vital
+      units in the case of dynamical aggregates, as for Professor Bastian to
+      insist upon crystalline units in the case of statical aggregates or
+      crystals. Both processes, in their initial stages of development, lie
+      beyond the reach of human scrutiny, and all that we know, or possibly can
+      know, is, that certain inorganic conditions are favorable for the
+      development of crystals, as certain organic conditions are favorable for
+      the development of morphological cells. Beyond this Professor Bastian
+      knows nothing--we know nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale, in his recent work on "the Mystery of Life"--one that is
+      now justly attracting very wide attention--says: "Between the two sets of
+      phenomena, physical and vital, not the faintest analogy can be shown to
+      exist. The idea of a particle of muscular or nerve tissue being formed by
+      a process akin to crystallization, appears ridiculous to any one who has
+      studied the two classes of phenomena, or is acquainted with the structure
+      of these tissues." And he quietly, yet effectively, ridicules the idea
+      that the ultimate molecules of matter--substantially the same matter, in
+      fact--have the power to arrange themselves, independently of vital
+      tendency, alternately into a dog-cell or a man-cell, according to the
+      specific direction they may take, or the incidence of conditions they may
+      undergo, in their primary movement. And for the benefit of Professor
+      Beale, behind whose "bioplasts," we place the "vital unit"--not a variable
+      but a constant unit--we would have him bear in mind (what he so well
+      knows) that the finest fibres that go to make up these tissues lie quite
+      beyond the microscopic limit in their interlaced and spirally-coiled
+      reticulations, so that nothing can be predicated of their ultimate
+      contexture, any more than of the ultimate distribution of matter itself.
+      He has himself traced these wonderfully minute nerve-ramifications under
+      glasses of the highest magnifying power, and knows that their ultimate
+      distribution cannot be reached. Let him come out then, as the ablest
+      vitalist now living, and boldly assert the presence of the man-<i>unit</i>
+      and the dog-<i>unit,</i> instead of falling back on his bioplastic
+      spinners and weavers of tissue, which are only the servants and willing
+      workers of the one integral unit, or life-directing force, within. It is
+      far more rational, and, at the same time, more accordant with strict
+      scientific methods, to attribute these muscular and nerve reticulations to
+      a single direct cause, than to a multitude of secondary causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a world-wide difference between the dog-<i>ego</i> and the man-<i>ego;</i>
+      but the physical differences are not by any means the greatest. The
+      bioplastic spinners and weavers work as obediently for the one master-<i>ego</i>
+      as the other. They never stop to inquire how far they shall differentiate
+      this vital tissue or that, or in what direction even they shall work. Not
+      a thread is spun nor a shuttle thrown that is not directed by the one
+      head-webster of vital tissue. These obedient bioplasts determine nothing,
+      direct nothing. Each works in his own cell as obediently as a
+      galley-slave. All specific modifications, all determinate movements, all
+      molecular arrangements, all multiplications of bioplastic force, are the
+      work of the one vital webster, or principle of life, within--that which
+      shapes all, directs all, determines all. And this is true from the first
+      or embryological inception of the dog-unit or "germ," until the real
+      occupant of the dog-tenement dismisses his bioplastic weavers, and lies
+      down to die. And so of all vital units. Each determines its own structural
+      form, and unchangeably retains it to the end, even to the slightest
+      impression of a scar inflicted years and years before. The occupant of
+      this dog-mansion has dismissed one set of bioplastic weavers after
+      another; has thrown aside this spun tissue and that warp and woof of woven
+      texture, time and time again, so that the dog of to-day is not the same <i>physical</i>
+      dog of a year ago; and yet he has the same affection for his master,
+      carries with him the same scar received twenty years before in the chase,
+      gives the same glad bark of welcome as his owner nears home, exhibits the
+      same characteristic wag in his tail, and, lying down to sleep, dreams of
+      the once happy chase in which he is no longer able to engage. This
+      continuous presence of the same dog, through all these twenty years of
+      physical change--the old dog reappearing in the new, a dozen times
+      over--is what we mean by the constantly differentiating yet
+      undifferentiated "dog-unit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who attempt to bisect this vital unit, divide it up into one
+      fractional part after another, until it shall represent a million
+      bioplastic workers in as many different cells, are committing the same
+      sort of folly--in principle at least, if not in practice--as that which
+      led the simple-minded daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, in the
+      expectation of boiling the old bioplasts into new, and then, by the
+      cunning aid of Medea, who directed the operation, reuniting them into the
+      one Peliastic-unit they so much delighted to honor. But this first and
+      only recorded attempt at differentiating a vital unit disastrously failed,
+      as the reader of ancient myths well knows, although the experiment was
+      conducted by the most careful and loving hands. The necessary chemical
+      re-agents to reproduce life, as well as the necessary processes of
+      producing it <i>de novo</i> have not yet been ascertained, nor is it
+      likely they ever will be. And herein lies the most marked distinction
+      between crystallizable matter and living substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet there is no evidence that the vital principle perishes in the
+      destruction of its temporary organism. It is not the material seed that
+      germinates, but the vital principle it contains, bursting forth from its
+      environment into newness of life. All that can be alleged of either boiled
+      or calcined seeds is, that the material substances of which they were
+      composed are so changed in their chemical constituents, or molecular
+      adjustment, that they are no longer capable of developing, or being
+      developed, into a living organism. "Principles never die," and this is as
+      true of the vital principles in nature, as those obtaining in ethics and
+      morals. Were it possible to restore the exact chemical conditions and
+      constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more
+      doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give
+      forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of
+      spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically
+      prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in
+      the seed, but the vital principle therein--that continuously imparted to
+      nature from the great vital fountain of the universe--which burgeons forth
+      into life whenever and wherever the required conditions obtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In proof of this statement, we might instance any number of cases where
+      recently abandoned brick-yards and other clayey excavations, were situated
+      at considerable distances from any natural water-courses, or fish-stocked
+      ponds, from which spawn could have been derived, and yet these excavations
+      have no sooner been filled with permanently standing rain water, than
+      certain small fishes of the <i>Cyprinidae</i> and other families, have
+      made their appearance therein.[<a href="#foot30">30</a>] Nobody has
+      thought of stocking these standing pools of water with the fish in
+      question, nor has there been any surface overflow to account for their
+      presence, nor any other apparent means of transportation, if we except the
+      fish-catching birds, and they generally swallow their food in the water or
+      on the nearest tree to the point of capture. Any theory accounting for the
+      presence of spawn is, therefore, out of the question. This spawn must have
+      traversed hard clay deposits for the distance of half a mile or more to
+      make their appearance in these waters. The only possible explanation of
+      this class of phenomena, and they are by no means infrequent, is to be
+      found in "favoring conditions" and the "presence of vital units." They are
+      primordial manifestations of life, and such as would have made their
+      appearance in any corresponding latitude of the southern hemisphere, under
+      the same favoring conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this is true of all living organisms from the lowest morphological
+      cell, in the ichthyologic world, to the highest and lordliest conifer that
+      grows. Their spawn and seeds are perishable by heat, but the vital
+      principle that organizes them is as imperishable in one element as
+      another. No seven-times heated furnace, much less the experimental flasks
+      of the physicist, will affect a vital principle of nature any more than a
+      May-morning puff of the east wind would shake Olympus. And all the
+      countless myriads of vital units in nature are now manifesting themselves
+      in animal and vegetal forms, under favoring conditions, the same as in
+      those far-distant epochs of the world's history when a more exuberant
+      vegetation prevailed, if not a more abounding animal life. The same
+      persistent, ever-acting law of vital development and growth has been
+      present, in all conditions and circumstances of matter, ever since the
+      detritus of the silicious rocks felt the first influence of the rains, the
+      dews, and the sunlight. Then the earth commenced "to bring forth the
+      grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-trees yielding fruit, after
+      his kind;" and in their growth was laid the foundation of animal life.
+      Whether there was any audible or inaudible command of God uttered at the
+      time, is not the question. It is the <i>fact</i> of vital growth that we
+      are after, and not the command. The geologic records attest the fact, as
+      well as the ever-acting vital law; and it is enough for us to know, with
+      sturdy old Richard Hooker, that all law--and especially all <i>vital</i>
+      law--"has her seat in the bosom of God, and her voice is the harmony of
+      the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale, while resolutely combating the physical hypothesis of
+      life, is not a little unfortunate in his use of scientific terms. He is
+      constantly using those of "living matter" and "dead matter," as if they
+      contained no fatal concession to the materialists, with which to
+      completely overthrow his own ultimate conclusions as to life. For he gains
+      nothing by merely substituting "bioplasm" and "bioplasts" for "protoplasm"
+      and "plastide particles." The essential plasma in both cases is the same,
+      and behind each lies the vital unit or principle therein manifested--the
+      invisible, indestructible germ or ZRA of the Bible genesis. Living
+      organisms come, of course, from this essential plasma, but without an
+      elementary principle or vital unit therein, there would be no "bioplasts,"
+      in the sense in which Professor Beale uses this term. These bioplasts are
+      living organisms which take up nutrient matter and convert it by
+      assimilation into tissues, nerves, fibres, bones, etc.--into the higher
+      and more complex organs that go to make up living structure. This
+      mysterious transmutation of one thing into another, as organic matter into
+      living organisms, is due to a vitally implanted principle, not to these
+      little bioplasts, or mere epithelial and other tools with which the vital
+      principle works. To apply the term "living matter" to the tools with which
+      a living structure is built up, is to lose sight of the master-mechanic
+      using them for an apparently intelligent purpose. The microscope may
+      demonstrate that these little bioplasts throb--have life; but there is no
+      intelligent purpose manifested by them except as they are moved by an
+      unseen hand that conclusively directs the whole structural work--builds up
+      the one complete symmetrical structure, not its thousand independent parts
+      having no relation to a general plan. The future lord and occupant of the
+      mansion is presumably present, and if he uses tools that "throb and have
+      life," it is because everything he touches is quickened into life that it
+      may be the more obedient to his will. If this structure be the
+      soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which
+      fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the
+      embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored
+      "dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Joseph Cook, who enthusiastically follows Professor Beale in his
+      theory of life, in one of his "Boston Monday Lectures," says; "It is
+      beyond contradiction that we know that these little points ('bioplasts')
+      of structureless matter spin the threads, and weave the warp and woof, of
+      organisms." With all due respect to this distinguished lecturer, we must
+      except to not less than three points in as many lines of his
+      over-confident statement. In the first place, we know nothing respecting
+      the "beginnings of life," which may not be contradicted with some show of
+      reason. Take his own definition of "bioplasts," as copied from Professor
+      Beale, coupled with what they both term "nutrient matter" and "germinal
+      matter," or bioplasm, and this confident assertion of his will land him at
+      once where the highest powers of the microscope fail to give back any
+      intelligible answer, or where neither assertion nor contradiction avails
+      anything. A bioplast, they tell us, is a germinal point in germinal matter
+      or bioplasm. It is also assumed that the central portion of every cell in
+      an organic tissue is a bioplast. Here this wonderful little weaver of
+      tissue sits spinning his threads and weaving them into the warp and woof
+      of "formed matter"--that which, according to Professor Beale, becomes
+      "dead matter" as soon as it is woven! But it is admitted that the nerve
+      fibres constitute an uninterrupted network which admits of no
+      endings--that is, whose ultimate reticulations lie beyond the microscopic
+      limit. But there is a cell in every hundredth part of an inch of these
+      ultimate reticulations, in each of which one of these bioplastic weavers
+      sits plying his threads into the warp and woof of nerve tissue, if not of
+      nerve force. What is known of these little weavers, either by Mr. Joseph
+      Cook or Professor Lionel S. Beale? Manifestly nothing, unless they have
+      been specially favored with microscopes of over 2,800 diameters--the
+      highest yet made,--and have fathomed the ultimate implications of nerve
+      force; an assumption on the part of the Boston lecturer to which we are
+      bound to except.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor are these "bioplasts" mere structureless matter, however minute they
+      may be as "little points." They differ only from "morphological cells," in
+      the definitional language employed by different theorists, and lack the
+      all-essential accuracy of distinction necessary to scientific
+      classification. To define a bioplast as a germinal point in germinal
+      matter, or bioplasm, is to draw no satisfactory line of distinction
+      between the two, except that the one is a mere aggregation of the other. A
+      germinal mass is only made up of germinal points--those considered as the
+      least of any given whole--however infinitesimal they may be in theoretical
+      statement. If any germinal point in germinal matter, therefore, be a
+      bioplast, then every germinal point, to the extent of making up its entire
+      mass, must be a bioplast; and the distinction between the two becomes
+      merely verbal, and without generic signification. But every morphological
+      cell is conceded to be an organism, whether it lie within or beyond the
+      microscopic limit. And it invariably exhibits a greater or less amount of
+      cellular activity at its centre. It grows rather than spins; it builds up
+      tissue, rather than weaves it into warp and woof; it assimilates nutritive
+      matter rather than plies a loom in any conceivable sense in which we may
+      view that industrial machine. No matter what we may call this point of
+      vital activity in a cell--whether it be a bioplast, a plastid, a
+      physiological unit, or a granule of "elementary life-stuff"--it simply
+      performs the one single function of life to which it is specifically
+      assigned in the process of "building up" any one identical individual of a
+      species, whether it be a man, an ape, a tree, or a parasitic fungus. The
+      very admission that the bioplast spins, makes it an organism, and not mere
+      structureless matter. For the first thread it spins is manifestly for its
+      own covering or the ornamentation of its own cell-walls. And to speak of
+      these as "structureless matter" is to confound all scientific sense, as
+      well as meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third objection to Mr. Cook's statement is, that if bioplasts spin, it
+      is as dependent, and not as independent machines or agencies. There are
+      millions of these bioplasts--taking the word in the sense in which
+      Professor Beale uses it--in every living organism considered as a
+      biological whole. In the case of man, there are millions of them within a
+      comparatively small compass; and each has its own cell to which its
+      specific work is assigned. Now, these germinal points, or bioplasts, in
+      each of these myriads of cells, work, not separately and independently,
+      like so many oysters in their respective shells, but harmoniously and
+      together, as if under the supervisional direction of one supreme architect
+      and builder. This builder is that one elementary principle of life,
+      appertaining to each specific individual as a species, with which nature
+      was endowed from the beginning, and which, in the case of man, was a
+      direct emanation from Deity. It is this vital principle manifesting itself
+      <i>in</i> all living organisms, not <i>from</i> them; directing Professor
+      Beale's "bioplastic weavers," not directed by them; availing itself of
+      necessary plasmic conditions, if not giving rise to them in the first
+      instance; observing no developmental processes by which one form of life
+      laps over upon another, and following no order but that of universal
+      harmony in the Divine intendment. There is struggle and rivalry for
+      existence, even among the same classes, orders, genera, and species, and
+      the smallest and weakest must give place to the largest and strongest
+      everywhere, and <i>vice versa</i>, as Time, the greatest of all rodents,
+      gnaws away at the mystical tree of life. But in every living organism,
+      from the lowest and simplest to the highest and most complex, all
+      bioplastic spinners of filamentous tissue, all plastide weavers of
+      membranous or spun matter, all epithelial bobbin-runners, and other
+      anatomical helpers and workers, perform their respective tasks under the
+      special supervision we have named, that is, under the higher unit of life.
+      They all work for the advancement and well-being of the higher organism of
+      which they form a component and necessarily subordinate part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that Professor Beale has discovered that what he calls bioplasm
+      and germinal points or bioplasts may take on a distinct and separate color
+      from tissue, when subjected to a solution of carmine in ammonia, is no
+      evidence that he has penetrated the adytum of this sacred temple of Life,
+      wherein lies the "mystery of mysteries." It is an important discovery so
+      far as tracing tissue is concerned, but it admits him into no higher
+      mystery within the temple built by God than another may attain to by the
+      accidental discovery that the tissues may take on the same color in some
+      other solution--by no means an improbable discovery. Carmine in ammonia is
+      not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being
+      carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness
+      and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has
+      made <i>his</i> happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other
+      equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit
+      upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent
+      direction--one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the
+      shade as Mr. Cook thinks the bioplasts have already thrown the cells. But
+      decidedly the most objectionable statement of Professor Beale, although
+      one confidently re-affirmed by our "Boston Monday Lecturer," is that which
+      makes bioplasm and bioplasts the only "living matter." We have already
+      referred to the phrases "living matter" and "non-living matter" as
+      altogether objectionable in biological statement, since they are more than
+      half-way concessions to the materialists, who contemptuously order the
+      vitalists to take a "back seat" in the discussions now going forward as to
+      the true origin of life. But the objection we here make is less technical,
+      and touches a far more vital point in the inquiry. It is true that
+      Professor Beale speaks of "formed matter," as if it were a peculiar
+      something--a sort of <i>tertium quid</i>--between living and non-living
+      matter. But he distinctly avers that the substance which turns red in his
+      carmine solutions is the "only living matter," and hence asserts,
+      inferentially at least, that all other matter, in any and every living
+      organism, is "dead matter." But we may just as confidently aver that no
+      matter is living in any vital organism which has not been assimilated and
+      built up into living membranous tissue capable of responding (in the case
+      of man) to his will, as well as performing the autonomous functions of
+      plants and the lower animals. For all these membranous tissues are
+      innumerably thronged with bioplasts or plastide particles, not for the
+      purposes of obedience to man's will, or of performing any autonomous
+      function, but simply to supply the tissues with the necessary nutrient
+      matter to make up for the constant waste that is going on in a healthy
+      living organ. This waste is very much greater than has heretofore been
+      supposed, so that the man or animal of to-day may be an entirely distinct
+      and separate one, considered materially, from that of a year or more ago.
+      And this averment would have a decided advantage over Professor Beale's,
+      since, in meeting a friend, we might be certain that four-fifths of him at
+      least was alive, while the other one-fifth was industriously at work to
+      keep him alive, instead of a stalking corpse, as he would otherwise be,
+      upon the street. Besides, it would obviate the necessity, on the part of
+      the vitalists, of giving themselves four-fifths away to the materialists,
+      as Professor Beale virtually does in the argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its
+      life--stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its
+      exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where
+      are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only
+      weaving the nerves, tissues, muscles, bones, and even the wonderful
+      plumage of this canary bird, but plying the invisible threads of
+      song--throwing off its chirps, carols, trills, quavers, airs, overtures
+      and brilliant <i>roulades</i>, as if the little vocalist had caught its
+      inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts
+      now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The
+      occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has
+      dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay
+      to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No
+      chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, or
+      interfere with the occupations assigned them. The machinery that ran their
+      looms is stopped--that is all. The invisible shuttles have ceased to
+      ply--the meshes of their tangled webs are broken--the more delicate
+      threads of song are snapped in sunder, but the bioplastic spinners and
+      weavers are all there. Not one of them has been displaced from its seat,
+      nor in any way disturbed or molested in its work. If they are conscious of
+      any danger, it is that the occupant of this little song-mansion has
+      suddenly stepped out--is no longer present to direct their tasks. The icy
+      hand of decay and death will soon be upon them--these poor bioplastic
+      weavers of tissue--but the vocal spark, the "bright gem instinct with
+      music," is beyond the reach of these dusky messengers. <i>Where</i> it is,
+      not man, but the Giver of all life knows. We only know, when our faith is
+      uplifted by inspiration, that--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The soul of music never dies,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Nor slumbers in its
+        shell;<br /> 'Tis sphere-descended from the skies,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;And
+        thence returns to dwell."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="09"></a>Chapter IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Among the more startling, if not decidedly brilliant, vital theories which
+      have been advanced within the last few years, is that which makes life an
+      "undiscovered correlative of force." Those who have the reputation of
+      being the profoundest thinkers and delvers in the newly-discovered realm
+      of Force-correlation in Europe, and who have more or less modestly
+      contributed to that reputation themselves, have evidently thought to
+      eclipse, if not to entirely throw into the shade, the great exploit of
+      Leverrier, in pointing out the exact place in their empirical heavens
+      where the superior optics of some future observer shall behold, in all its
+      glory, this "undiscovered correlative of force," which they have indicated
+      as lying within the higher possibilities and potentialities of matter.
+      Precisely what they mean by this undiscovered correlate, is what puzzles
+      us quite as much to determine as it does the materialists to explain. Were
+      they to define life as an "undiscovered force" simply, their definition
+      would manifestly lack in brilliancy what it would conclusively make up in
+      precision and accuracy of definitional statement. But such a poor
+      metaphrastic and half-circular exposition of vital force would never
+      answer the necessities of that profounder profundity required for the
+      success of modern scientific treatises. Hence the interpolation of this
+      "correlative" of theirs. Let us ascertain, if we can, what it means, since
+      they are so chary of informing us themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A "correlate" of a thing--any thing--simply implies the reciprocal
+      relation it bears to some other thing. As a cognate term it expresses
+      nothing, can express nothing, but reciprocity of relationship, such as
+      father to son, brother to sister, uncle to aunt, nephews to nieces, etc.
+      As applied to vital force, it means nothing more nor less than that this
+      particular force stands in some sort of relationship to the other forces
+      of nature, or, as they would have us believe, the <i>material</i> forces
+      of nature. And the simple strength or potentiality of this relationship is
+      what makes all the difference between the severally related forces of the
+      universe, since it would be as impossible to differentiate a fixed
+      relationship as to change the nature of vital units. But whether vital
+      force, as a distinct correlate, is paternal or filial, brotherly or
+      sisterly, avuncular or amital in its relationship, is not stated. The
+      scientific formula, however, may be stated thus: As A (chemical force) is
+      to B (molecular force) so is C (a third known force) to <i>x</i> (the
+      vital or unknown force); so that, by multiplying the antecedents and
+      consequents together, and eliminating the value of <i>x</i>, we may
+      mathematically obtain the value of vital force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to eliminate the value of <i>x</i> is what troubles them. Herbert
+      Spencer has tried his hand at it, but failed to express life under any
+      higher correlation than "molecular force;" nor can he definitely inform us
+      whether either force is third or fourth cousin to the other. But he
+      manifestly regards their relationship as constituting either a very
+      attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the
+      value of <i>x</i>, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology,
+      and gives us this new definitional value of life--that singularly
+      contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in
+      scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular
+      force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not demolished,
+      this machinery, in his recent treatise on "The Mystery of Life," we will
+      spare it any further blows, and proceed to the consideration of "molecular
+      force."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before we proceed however, to the consideration of this force, let us
+      definitely understand the meaning of the terms we shall be called upon to
+      use. We can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of "molecular
+      attraction," or that force acting immediately on the integrant molecules
+      or particles of a body, as distinguished from the attraction of
+      gravitation which acts at unlimited distances. But when it comes to
+      ascribing other and higher manifestations of power to molecules, such as
+      have not been scientifically shown to exist, we must feel our way with
+      caution, and demand of these pretentious molecules, or rather of their
+      materialistic backers, a reason for the faith, or rather force, that is in
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is agreed by all physicists, as well as chemists, that a "molecule" is
+      the smallest conceivable quantity of a simple or compound substance, as an
+      "atom" is the smallest conceivable quantity of an element which enters
+      into combination with other elements to form material substance. For
+      instance, the smallest conceivable quantity of water is a molecule, while
+      the smallest conceivable quantity of either of the two elements of which
+      water is composed, is an atom. In every molecule of water, therefore,
+      there are three elementary atoms, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And
+      since a molecule, as a general rule, contains two or more atoms, and may
+      contain many of them, why not predicate dynamic force of the atoms, which
+      lie one step nearer the elementary forces of nature? For the mightiest
+      forces of nature lie in these elements, when forced into unnatural
+      alliances, or chained up in durance vile. It is in the elements of matter,
+      and not in its molecules, that this tremendous dynamic force resides. Man,
+      knowing this, harnesses them into his service, first by forcing them into
+      unnatural alliances, as in the case of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre,
+      and then successfully pitting them in conflict against the rocks and the
+      general inertia of matter. To charge all the destructive work they do on
+      the innocent and harmless molecules, which are two steps removed from the
+      actual force expended, is drawing conclusions from the sheerest
+      hypothetical data. It is the office of "molecular force," if there is any
+      meaning to the term beyond what is expressed by "molecular attraction," to
+      conserve matter--bind rocks together, not rend them in sunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the dynamic forces of nature lie pent up in the molecules, then man
+      must array molecular force against molecular force in order to rend rocks
+      and tear mountains in sunder. This theory of molecular force, as extended
+      to vital physics in the force-doctrine of life, is irreconcilably at war
+      with the principal phenomena of life, and should be classed with the other
+      undiscovered correlates of force, which Professor Beale speaks of as "the
+      fictions of a mechanical imagination." The truth is that these much abused
+      and much slandered molecules are the most innocent and harmless things in
+      nature. They never become destructive unless some other force than that
+      inhering in themselves drags them into its service and hurls them along a
+      devastating path. Of themselves, they are the very quintessence of
+      quiessence in the universe, and, when formed in nature's laboratory, at
+      once seek quiet and loving companionship with kindred molecules, and
+      retain it forever afterwards. The idea that they should break away from
+      their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or
+      constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living
+      dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as
+      perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be
+      imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold
+      of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery
+      and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, not in the inclination
+      of the molecules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there is any truth in this molecular-force-theory of life, it is about
+      time for us to discard some of the old categories respecting matter,
+      motion, and life, and substitute new ones in their place. In the
+      multiplicity of new scientific terms constantly springing up for
+      recognition in these days, there ought to be no difficulty in expressing
+      the true categories, and assigning to them their proper definitional
+      value. To include physical force, chemical force, molecular force, and
+      vital force all under one and the same category, and then interpret their
+      several modes of action on any theory of force-correlation, is not
+      emancipating language from the gross thraldom into which their "molecular
+      machinery" has driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the
+      force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of
+      fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less
+      impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and
+      things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences,
+      coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable
+      chapter of interchangeable predications. All these different expressions
+      of force are to be tethered together--definitionally bound hand and
+      foot--under the one explanatory head of "force-correlation." We protest
+      against the labor of thus unifying all the natural forces of the universe,
+      even if it were practicable under scientific methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Professor Tyndall denies that "molecular groupings" and "molecular
+      motions" explain anything--account for anything--in the way of explicating
+      life-manifestations, or determining what life is.[<a href="#foot31">31</a>]
+      And it would be difficult to cite a stronger and more determined
+      materialist as authority on the point we are considering. He says: "If
+      love were known to be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the
+      molecules of the brain, and hate with the left-handed, we should remain as
+      ignorant as before, as to the cause of motion." But there is no proof that
+      the molecules of the brain manifest any other motions than those necessary
+      for keeping up the normal condition of health and vital activity in the
+      brain itself. No one can be certain that he has seen these molecules in a
+      state of mental activity; for where portions of the human brain have been
+      exposed to microscopic examination, even in perfect states of
+      consciousness on the part of those whose brains have been laid bare, there
+      can be no certainty that the molecular action, if any, is referable to one
+      set of movements more than another. And even in the case of animalcules,
+      as seen in the object glass of the microscope, there is no absolute
+      certainty that their quick, darting or jerking movements are due to any
+      life-manifestation, as heretofore assumed. Some quite as well defined
+      forms are entirely motionless, and if all were so, it would be idle to
+      predicate vitality of them.[<a href="#foot32">32</a>] These infinitessimal
+      and constantly varying forms, many of them not the one hundred-thousandth
+      part of an inch in length, to say nothing of their other dimensions, may
+      owe their oscillations, wave movements, darting and other manifestations,
+      and even their molecular arrangements and rearrangements, to other causes
+      than those strictly "vital." And it should be borne in mind that their
+      actual movements are just as much exaggerated under the microscope as
+      their real dimensions. But as they make their appearance in organic
+      infusions only, they are presumably vital organisms rather than
+      fomentative or mere filamentous yeast-manifestations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Huxley, while conceding that molecular changes may take place
+      under environing life-conditions, or in protoplasmic matter, denies that
+      the "primordial cells" possesses in any degree the characteristics of a
+      "machine," nor can they undergo any differentiating process by which the
+      character of their manifestations can be changed. And he even denies to
+      them the poor right to originate or in any way modify their own plasma. He
+      says: "They are no more the producers of vital phenomena, than the shells
+      scattered in orderly line along the sea-beach are the instruments by which
+      the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the
+      cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted."
+      This is undoubtedly true of all cells in which the vital or functional
+      office has ceased, as in the case of Professor Beale's "formed matter."
+      The cells are the result of the vital principle that lies behind them, and
+      simply indicate where life exists, or has manifestly ceased to exist.
+      Where the vital currents have ceased to flow, the wreck of primordial
+      cells is quite as wide and disastrous as where millions of sea-shells have
+      been strewn along a desolated and storm-swept sea-beach. They all come,
+      both the cells and shells, from the pre&euml;xisting vital units, or
+      determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement,
+      without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent
+      tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only
+      favor its manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But some of the materialists claim that what we call "vital units," or
+      invisible, indestructible germs,[<a href="#foot33">33</a>] are at best
+      only "physical relations;" that they have nothing more than a hypothetical
+      existence, without any independent recognizable quality justifying our
+      conclusions respecting them. But may not this identical language be
+      retortively suggested in the case of their "correlates of force?" What
+      more than a hypothetical existence have they? Certainly their enthusiasm
+      to get rid of all vital conditions or manifestations, is quite as marked a
+      feature in their speculations respecting life as any enthusiasm we have
+      shown in the verification of vital phenomena, on the established law of
+      cause and effect. They insist upon this law in the case of statical
+      aggregates, and even assign absolute identity of attributes; but when it
+      comes to dynamical aggregates, they fall back on partial identity only,
+      and deny the presence of the law altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor are they any more felicitous in their treatment of other points in
+      controversy. In speaking of his "plastide particles," Professor Bastian,
+      the most defiant challenger of vitalistic propositions now living, says:
+      "Certain of these particles, through default of <i>necessary conditions,</i>
+      never actually develop into higher modes of being." Here he makes the
+      absence of "necessary conditions" the cause of non-development, while he
+      stoutly denies that the presence of such "conditions" give rise to the
+      development of a pre-existing vital unit. And yet, strange to say, he
+      speaks of the elemental origin of "living matter" as "having probably
+      taken place on the surface of our globe since the far-remote period when
+      such matter was first engendered." But how his "sum-total of external
+      conditions," acting upon <i>dead</i> matter, can "engender" <i>living</i>
+      matter, is one of those "related heterogenetic phenomena" which he does
+      not condescend to explain. It is by this sort of scientific verbiage that
+      he gets rid of the pre-existing vital principle, or germinal principle of
+      life, which the biblical genesis declares to be in the earth itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be entirely consistent with himself, he should deny the existence of
+      this germinal principle in the seeds of plants themselves, and insist upon
+      the sum-total of external conditions as the cause of all
+      life-manifestations, in the vegetal as in the animal world. There can be
+      no inherent tendency, he should insist, in the seed itself towards
+      structural development, but only external conditions acting upon "dead
+      matter," in heterogentic directions. The shooting down of the radicle or
+      undeveloped root, and the springing up of the plumule or undeveloped
+      stalk, is accordingly due to no vital principle in the seed, but to the
+      complexity or entanglement of the molecules wrapped up in their
+      integumentary environment. And this, or some similar fortuitous
+      entanglement of molecules, should account for all life-manifestations, as
+      well as all life-tendencies, in nature. These molecular entanglements
+      should, therefore, be infinite in number, as well as in fortuitous
+      complexity, to account for all the myriad forms of life "engendered from
+      dead matter" in the material universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For if there is any one thing that the materialists insist upon more
+      resolutely than another, it is the fortuitousness of nature--the happening
+      by chance of whatever she does. Formerly it used to be the "fortuitous
+      concourse of atoms;" now it is the "fortuitous aggregate of molecules." By
+      what accidental or fortuitous happening the atoms have dropped out of
+      their scientific categories, and the molecules have been advanced to their
+      commanding place in <i>absolute accidentalness</i>, is one of those
+      unassignable causes in which they apparently so much delight. We can only
+      account for it on the supposition that they have all become worshippers of
+      that blind and accidental Greek goddess, who bore the horn of Amalthea and
+      plentifully endowed her followers with a wealth of language and other
+      much-coveted gifts, but not with the most desirable knack at disposing of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The true cause of vital phenomena manifestly depends on these two
+      conditions--the presence of the specific vital unit, and the necessary
+      environing plasma, or nutrient matter, for its primary development.
+      Without the presence of both of these conditions, or conditioning
+      incidences, there can be no life-manifestation anywhere. And we do not see
+      that anything is gained, even in the matter of scientific nomenclature, by
+      merely substituting "molecular force" for "vital force," in the
+      explication of vital phenomena. Even granting that molecular changes do
+      take place during the development of the vital units in their necessary
+      plasmic environment; it by no means follows that these changes are not
+      dependent on the vital principle <i>as it acts</i>, rather than on the
+      molecules <i>as they act</i>,[<a href="#foot34">34</a>] The higher force
+      should always subordinate the lower in all metamorphic, as well as other
+      processes, of nature. It is the vital principle that differentiates
+      matter--the aggregate of molecules--not matter differentiating the vital
+      principle. No "mol&eacute;cules organiques" can ever differentiate an
+      ape-unit into a man-unit, any more than Professor Tyndall can fetch a
+      Plato out of mere sky-mist. Once an ape-unit, always an ape-unit; once a
+      man-unit, eternally a man-unit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let the vitalists stick to this proposition--this eternally fixed <i>unit</i>
+      as "<i>une id&eacute;e dans l'entendement de Dieu," </i> (to use a better
+      French expression than English)--and they can fight the materialists off
+      their own ground anywhere. The one sublime verity of the universe is that
+      "life exists," and that it has existed from all eternity <i>as possible</i>
+      in the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind alone. If materialistic science
+      is disposed to butt its head against this impregnable proposition, it can
+      do so. The proposition will stand, whatever may happen to the
+      inconsiderate head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For science may press her devotees into as many different pursuits as
+      there are starting-points to an azimuth circle, and command them to search
+      and find out the ultimate causes of things in the universe, but the
+      forever narrowing circle in one direction, and the forever widening one in
+      the other, would utterly baffle all their attempted research. Whether they
+      descended into the microscopic world, with its myriad-thronged conditions
+      of life, or passed upward and outward, in <i>Sirius-</i>distances, to the
+      irresolvable nebul&aelig;, where other and perhaps brighter stars might
+      burst upon their view--gleaming coldly and silently down the still
+      enormous fissures and chasms in the heavens--the result would be the same.
+      Wider and wider fields of observation might open upon their view, as the
+      stellar swarms thickened and the power of human vision failed, but the
+      uranological expedition would return no wiser than when it started, and
+      Science would still be confronted with the same illimitability of space,
+      the same infinitude of matter, and the same incomprehensibility of the
+      world-arranging intelligence that lies beyond. For He who hath garnished
+      the heavens by his spirit--who divideth the sea with his power, and
+      hangeth the earth upon nothing--"<i>holdeth back the face of his throne
+      and spreadeth his cloud upon it</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What if, in one direction, we should find those inconceivably small
+      specks, or mere bioplastic points, which we call "living matter," or, in
+      the other direction, those inconceivably vast world-forming masses which
+      we call "dead matter," who shall say that "the secret places of the Most
+      High" are not hidden from us, or that when the spirit of God first moved
+      through these vast fissures and chasms in the heavens upon the face of all
+      matter, there was not imparted to it that "animating principle of life" of
+      which the biblical genesis speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting
+      itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set
+      aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological
+      expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for
+      scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their
+      specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and
+      molecular theories of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But speaking of the higher forces as subordinating the lower, suggests
+      that there should be something more definitely explained regarding the
+      hypothesis of "differentiation," on which Mr. Herbert Spencer hangs so
+      much of his mathematical faith in the true explication of vital phenomena.
+      The term "differentiation" is not so formidable as it might seem to the
+      general reader at first sight. As applied to physiological problems it
+      should have the same determinate value, in expressing functional
+      differences, as in the higher operations of mathematics. Nothing can, of
+      course, differentiate itself, nor can any two things differentiate each
+      other, even when functionally allied. The actual co&euml;fficient sought
+      is the difference effected, in functional value, in one of two independent
+      variables. For all formul&aelig; in differentiation are constructed on the
+      hypothesis that only one of two variables suffers change. The differential
+      co&euml;fficient has yet to be determined which shall express the
+      developmental changes in two variables at once. When, therefore, we
+      attempt to extend the formul&aelig; of differentiation to plant and animal
+      life, we are confronted by a very formidable difficulty at the outset--the
+      impossibility of determining an invariable co&euml;fficient for any two
+      variables. Besides, all attempts at differentiating an ape-unit into
+      anything else than an ape-unit would be as impossible as to multiply or
+      divide cabbages by turnips, or sparrows by sparrowhawks. Such divisions
+      would give us no quotients, any more than their differentiations would
+      give us a co&euml;fficient. Physiological differentiation will, therefore,
+      never help us out of fixed species or nearly allied types. We can bridge
+      no specific differences by it. In the differentiation of the horse and the
+      ass for instance, the superior blood will predominate in the preservation
+      of types, and even the mule will kick against further differentiation.
+      Nature would so utterly abhor the practice as resolutely to slam the door
+      in Mr. Spencer's face, if the obstinacy of the mule did not kick it off
+      its hinges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And nature would be quite as intractable in the case of
+      "force-correlation," another of Mr. Spencer's redoubtable phrases. This
+      term is quite recent in its application to animate objects, nor has it
+      been long applied to inanimate. It is claimed to be a recently discovered
+      force, and is one that the materialists have seized upon as the Herculean
+      club with which to smite all vital theories to the earth. Its meaning, so
+      far as it has any, is not difficult to get at. The simplest way to explain
+      it, however, is the best. The reader is to understand that when he rubs
+      two flat sticks together, the heat thereby engendered is not the result of
+      friction, as all the world has heretofore supposed, but that the amount of
+      force expended in rubbing the right-hand stick against the left-hand
+      stick, is, by some law of versability, not over-well defined, transferred
+      to the two sticks, and gets so entangled between their surfaces that it
+      can only reappear in another and altogether different kind of force. When
+      it leaves the hands and passes into the two sticks, it is, as the
+      materialists assert, vital force. But as no force can be annihilated, the
+      conclusive assumption is that it still exists somewhere. All of it, in the
+      first place, went into the two flat sticks, and, when there, <i>ceased to
+      be vital force.</i> Some of it disappeared, of course, in overcoming the
+      inertia of the sticks, but the bulk of it became entangled with the
+      superficial molecules of the two sticks, and reappeared as <i>heat</i>--another
+      name for molecular force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what is meant by the "differentiation" of vital force into
+      molecular force, and <i>vice versa</i>. But by what process of rubbing,
+      under this law of versability, molecular force can be reversed, or
+      differentiated back into vital force, Mr. Spencer has not condescended to
+      inform us. The simple truth is, and the materialists will be forced to
+      admit it in the end, that there is no verification of this theory beyond
+      that of mere force-equivalence. For instance, it has been experimentally
+      determined that a certain amount of fuel expended in heat is equivalent to
+      a certain amount of mechanical force, not mechanical <i>work</i>, as M.
+      Carnot puts it. For force is not expended in work until it is actually
+      generated, and the amount generated, not that expended in work, is the
+      real equivalence of the heat produced from fuel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another problem is presented when it comes to determining the amount of
+      generated force necessary to run a piece of machinery which shall
+      accomplish a given amount of mechanical work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A far better phrase to express this equivalence of force has been
+      suggested and used by several writers in what is called the "Transmutation
+      of Force." For there is no correlation, or reciprocal relation, between
+      heat as originally produced by the consumption of fuel and the force as
+      engendered in steam before it is transmuted into work. Nor is there any
+      real equivalence as between the two forces after its transmutation. A very
+      large per centage of heat is lost in its transmutation from a latent form
+      in fuel to an active or available form in steam, and a still greater loss
+      in its transmission into work by machinery. Theoretically, there may be
+      such an equivalence as that named, but practically it is impossible to
+      realize it. And a theory that is impossible of realization is of no
+      practical utility in itself, and of little value as the basis of further
+      theory. If, then, the theory of force equivalence is a failure in
+      practical application, it furnishes a very poor basis on which to
+      predicate force-correlation, or the doctrine of reciprocal forces. It is
+      estimated, for instance, that a pound weight falling seven hundred and
+      seventy-two feet, will, in striking the earth, impart to it a degree of
+      heat equivalent to raising one pound of water 1&deg; F. But the heat thus
+      imparted can never be so utilized as to raise a pound weight seven hundred
+      and seventy-two feet into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This shows that there is no actual reciprocity of relationship between the
+      force as originally engendered and finally expended in work. Nor can it be
+      shown that the original force is transmuted or changed into another and
+      different kind of force by the operation. The force generated and the
+      force expended are essentially one and the same, as much so as that
+      transmitted from the power to the weight by means of a rope and pulley.
+      And the quality of the force is not changed, whether the weight be lifted
+      by machinery or the human hand. Force, in its mechanical sense, is that
+      power which produces motion, or an alteration in the direction of motion,
+      and is incapable of being specialized, except in a highly figurative
+      sense, into a thousand and one correlates of motion. But these
+      miscellaneous and figurative forces are not what we are considering. The
+      doctrine of force-correlation takes no such wide and comprehensive sweep.
+      It embraces neither the force of wit, nor the force of folly; but
+      mechanical force and its equivalents. The force exercised by the human
+      hand in lifting a weight either with or without rope and pulley is, in
+      every definitional sense of the word, mechanical force. For the arm and
+      hand are only the implements, or mechanical contrivances of nature, by
+      which the will-power transmutes itself into work, or, more properly
+      speaking, transmits itself from the point of force-generation to that of
+      force-expenditure. And this is precisely the office performed by all
+      mechanical contrivances for the transmission--not transmutation--of force.
+      And the most perfect machine is that which transmits the engendered force,
+      with the least possible waste or abandonment, to its point of ultimate
+      expenditure in work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these hypothetical correlates of force, therefore, predicated upon the
+      doctrine of force-transmutation, have no foundation in fact, since the
+      force transmitted from the point of generation to the point of expenditure
+      undergoes no change but that of direction, in its passage along rope,
+      wire, belt, pulley, shafting, etc. A man whose limbs have been paralyzed,
+      may still will to remove mountains. The will-power is the same, but the
+      mechanical contrivances for its transmission are wanting. Of the actual
+      point or centre of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power,
+      we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards
+      the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and
+      tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or
+      pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a
+      rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular
+      changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely
+      related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through the contracted
+      tissues, electrifies the crowbar, or flashes into work from the point of a
+      pickaxe. Whatever produces, or tends to produce, motion, or an alteration
+      in its direction, is mechanical force, no matter from what force-centre it
+      may start. When we can definitely determine the centre of vital force, as
+      exercised in building up vital structure, <i>not in wielding pickaxes</i>,
+      it is to be hoped we shall be able to distinguish, by the proper
+      correlates, vital force from that which is mechanical. But the task is
+      manifestly a hopeless one with the materialists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Beale positively denies that there are any such physical
+      force-relations as those claimed by the materialists, and asserts that
+      vital force bears no relation, or correlation, to either chemical or
+      physical force; that the one is a distinct and separate factor from the
+      other, and cannot be interpreted in the same force-formul&aelig;. He says:
+      "The idea of motion, or heat, or light, or electricity <i>forming</i> or
+      <i>building</i> up, or <i>constructing</i> any texture capable of
+      fulfilling a definite purpose, seems absurd, and opposed to all that is
+      known, and yet is the notion continually forced upon us, that vitality,
+      which does construct, is but a correlate of ordinary energy or motion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after devoting so much time to "force-correlation," and
+      "force-differentiation," the advocates of "molecular-machinery" may feel
+      themselves neglected if we dismiss their favorite hobby without further
+      notice. The precise parentage of this term is disputed, but it has any
+      number of <i>putative</i> fathers. We have spoken of the size of the
+      molecules themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled
+      together on the point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now
+      consider the size of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own
+      machine, and is provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact,
+      it is a very nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the
+      molecules, instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules
+      run the machines. Unfortunately, the question is one that can never be
+      determined. The requisite scientific data will forever be wanting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Professor James C. Maxwell, now, or quite recently, filling the chair
+      of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, England, has
+      furnished us with <i>approximate</i> calculations. On the strength of his
+      approximations we will proceed to consider the dimensions of these
+      wonderful little machines. And first, it may be axiomatically laid down
+      that these molecular machines, which either run the molecules or are run
+      by them, can never exceed the size of their respective molecules.
+      Conceding, then, that each one of these machines exactly fits into its own
+      molecule, so as to present identically the same dimensions--as well as
+      their largest possible dimensions--it would require two millions of them,
+      placed in a row, to make one millimetre, or the one three hundred and
+      ninety-four thousandths of an inch in length, or seven hundred and
+      eighty-eight billions of them to make one inch! Who will ever be staggered
+      at <i>Sirius</i>-distances, after this? And who will deny that an infinite
+      world lies below the point of our microscopic vision, if not an Infinite
+      kingdom and throne beyond our telescopic glance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, following the same high authority in experimental physics, let us
+      consider the aggregate weight of these molecular machines. We will not
+      marshal their aggregate numbers in a row, for an array of forty billions
+      of them would make too insignificant a figure for inspection; but simply
+      give their actual weight as computed under the French or metric system.
+      Take, then, a million million million million of these machines, throwing
+      in molecules and all, and they will weigh, if there is no indiscreet
+      kicking of the beam, just a fraction between four and five grammes, or--to
+      differentiate the weights--a small fraction over one-tenth of an ounce!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why not get down to the atoms, of which the molecules are only the
+      theoretical congeries, and marshal the "atomic forces" into line? These
+      embryonic atoms are much the braver warriors, and, when summoned to do
+      battle, spring, lithe and light-armed, against the elemental foe. They are
+      no cowardly molecules, these atoms, but make war against Titans, as well
+      as Titanic thrones and powers. The elements recognize them as their body
+      guardsmen, their corps of invincible lancers, their bravest and best
+      soldiers in fight. And they are wholly indifferent as to the legions of
+      molecules arrayed against them, and would as soon hurl a mountain of them
+      into the sea as to sport with a zephyr or caper with the east wind. Why
+      not summon these countless myriads of bright and invincible spearmen, to
+      batter down the walls of this Cretan labyrinth of Life? An army of these
+      would be worth all the molecules that Professor Maxwell could array in
+      line, in a thousand years. No life-problem need remain unsolved with their
+      bright spears to drive the tenebrious mists before them. Even Professor
+      Tyndall's "fog-banks of primordial haze" would be ignominiously scattered
+      in flight before these atomic legions. Let our materialistic friends
+      summon them, then, to their aid. The field of controversy will never be
+      won by their molecular "Hessians." The ineffably bright lancers that stand
+      guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout
+      the vitalistic enemy. Advance them then to the front, and, beneath the
+      shadowy wing of pestilence or some other appalling ensign of destruction,
+      the abashed vital squadrons will flee in dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us pass from scientific speculations to alleged scientific facts.
+      In a paper read by Dr. Hughes Bennett before the Royal Society of
+      Edinburgh, in 1861, its author says: "The first step, in the process of
+      organic formation, is the production of an organic fluid; the second, the
+      precipitation of organic molecules, from which, according to the molecular
+      law of growth, all other textures are derived either directly or
+      indirectly." Here again the molecules, and not the elementary atoms, are
+      advanced to the front, and not a little anxiety is shown, in a
+      definitional way, to identify vital processes of growth with crystalline
+      processes of formation. But Dr. Bennett entirely mistakes, as well as
+      misstates, the process of vital development, if he does not overlook the
+      law governing the formation of crystals. There can be no symmetrically
+      arranged solids in an inorganic fluid without the presence of some law, or
+      principle, definitely determining, not the "precipitation," but the
+      "formation," of crystals. The inorganic particles are not precipitated or
+      thrown downward, any more than they are sublevated or thrown upward. The
+      process is one of formation, not precipitation. Every crystallographer,
+      not hampered by materialistic views and anti-vital theories, admits the
+      presence of a fixed and determinate law governing each crystalline system,
+      whatever may be the homologous parts or the unequal axes it represents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so of the equally undeviating law of vital growth. Life comes from no
+      mere "precipitation of organic molecules," as Dr. Bennett would have us
+      believe. If so, what is it that precipitates the molecules? They can
+      hardly be said to precipitate themselves. To precipitate, in a chemical
+      sense, is to be thrown down, or caused to be thrown down, as a substance
+      from its solution. What, then, causes the molecules to be thus
+      precipitously thrown down from a fluid to a solid, or a semi-solid, state?
+      It cannot be from any blind or inconsiderate haste on the part of the
+      molecules themselves. There must be some independent principle, or law of
+      nature--one presupposing an intelligent law-giver--to effect the
+      "precipitating process," if any such really exists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it does not exist. The first step is one of development and
+      growth--the manifestation of functional activity--the building up of
+      organic or cellular tissue. The exact process, in the case of seed-bearing
+      plants and trees, is well known. All those familiar with the
+      characteristic differences of seeds, their chemical constituents, their
+      tegumentary coverings, rudimentary parts, etc., thoroughly understand the
+      process in its outward manifestation. There is no precipitation of
+      molecules as in an organic fluid, unless the albumen lying between the
+      embryo and testa of the seeds, and constituting the nutriment on which the
+      plant feeds during its primary stages of growth, can be called a fluid. It
+      throws none of its characteristic ingredients downward any more than
+      upward. Indeed the greater tendency of its molecules is upward rather than
+      downward, in the "molecular processes" (vital ones) by which the embryonic
+      cell is started upon its career of plant-life. The celebrated Dr. Liebig
+      says of this albuminous environment: "It is the foundation, the
+      starting-point, of the whole series of peculiar tissues which constitute
+      those organs which are the seat of all vital actions." In the case of
+      animal life, this albumen abounds in the serum of the blood, enters
+      largely into the chyle and lymph, goes to build up the tissues and
+      muscles, and is the chief ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the
+      brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to
+      coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries
+      to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less
+      insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140&deg; to 160&deg;
+      F.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the seed is planted or placed in water, it first commences to swell
+      from the absorption of the water or moisture of the ground by the pores of
+      its external covering, the favorable temperature being from 60&deg; to 80&deg;
+      F. It gradually expands until its outer membranes burst, and its initial
+      rootlets clasp their hold upon the earth. From this point its several
+      stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the
+      first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a
+      change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it
+      would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in
+      decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the
+      grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the
+      Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the
+      decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened
+      into life--ascends into the bright light, the warm sunshine, the
+      refreshing presence of showers and dews. In this way it fulfils its
+      providential purpose of yielding to the sower the more munificent life
+      which he is forever seeking to attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its germination is the springing up of the inner living principle of the
+      grain, not its outer envelope or dead husk. This disappears in decay,
+      except the small nutrient portion within which the germinal principle of
+      life would seem to reside, and which undergoes a thorough chemical change
+      in the process of passing from death unto life, or being assimilated and
+      taken up into the new living structure. The Apostle's comparison
+      distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from
+      death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still
+      more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the
+      dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher
+      and more perfect life--the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in
+      the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and
+      co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally
+      constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing
+      agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the
+      present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and
+      decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most
+      beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death,
+      and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of
+      life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day.
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <a name="10"></a>Chapter X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-Point.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Granting that the assumption of Darwinism rests, as claimed, on the fixed
+      and inflexible adaptation of means to ends, in the diversified yet
+      measurably specialized processes of nature, there is no logical deduction
+      to be drawn therefrom but that which traces the representatives of all the
+      great types of the animal kingdom to one single source, and that not the
+      Sovereign Intelligence of the Universe, but a mere "ovule in protoplasm,"
+      or what may be defined, in its unaggregated form, as an inconceivably
+      small whirligig, having motion on a central axis, but whether an
+      independent motion of its own, or one derived from an Infinite
+      Intelligence, the Darwinian systematizers are not bold enough to aver.
+      They have too many <i>a priori</i> scruples either to assert the one
+      proposition or to deny the other. What set this little whirligig in motion
+      is a mystery that lies beyond the purview of science, so called, and into
+      the depths of this infinitessimal and most mysterious little chamber they
+      refuse to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They search not for the evidence of an Infinite Intelligence in the
+      outermost circle of the heavens where the highest is to be found, and
+      where a bound is set that we may not pass, but shutting their eyes to all
+      the grander evidences of such an Intelligence, they dive down into the
+      infinitessimal realm of nature and assume to dig out the sublimer secrets
+      of the universe there. And this is their grand discovery: That this
+      infinitessimal whirligig of theirs has not only whirled man into
+      existence, but the entire circle of the heavens, with the innumerable host
+      of stars that march therein, and all the boundless systems of worlds that
+      roll in space. With this subordination of the Infinite to the
+      infinitessimal, of intelligence to insensate matter, of divine energy, so
+      to speak, to blind molecular force, they are satisfied; and, like the mole
+      in the fable, conceive their little molecule to be the only possible
+      creator of a stupendous universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scrutinize my propositions closely, and see if I am guilty of misstating
+      theirs. Their new theory is only a slight modification of an old one, or
+      the old adage, <i>omne vivum ex ovo</i>--all life is from an egg. For they
+      assert that every living thing primordially proceeds from an ovule in
+      protoplasm, the essential part of the protoplasmic egg, so to speak, being
+      this little <i>ovum</i> or cellule, from which have issued all possible
+      organisms in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Nor is this theory
+      essentially confined to organic matter. A scientific co&ouml;rdination of
+      its several known parts, or alleged functions, extends the operations of
+      this infinitessimal whirligig to the plastic or uniformly diffused state
+      of all matter, from which has been evolved, in an infinite duration of
+      past time, not only life in its highest manifestations, but a universe so
+      stupendously grand that no amount of human intelligence can grasp the
+      first conception of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Emerson--our Ralph Waldo--virtually accepts this theory of
+      development, substituting, however, a stomach for an ovule, and the
+      reverse of the Darwinian proposition, in what he is pleased to call "the
+      incessant opposition of nature to everything hurtful." It is not the
+      "selection of the fittest" but the "rejection of the unfit," by which "a
+      beneficent necessity (I use his language) is always bringing things
+      right." "It is in the stomach of plants," he says, "that development
+      begins, and ends in the circles of the universe." "'Tis a long way," he
+      admits, "from the gorilla to the gentleman--from the gorilla to Plato,
+      Newton, Shakespeare--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of
+      legislation, the summits of science, art, poetry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few persons, I take it, will dispute this proposition. The road is a long
+      one and beset with all sorts of thorns and briars, such as Mr. Emerson's
+      philosophy will hardly eradicate from the wayside. Even the most refined
+      empiricism will find it difficult to stomach his stomachic theory of the
+      universe, which lands all atomic or corpuscular philosophy in a digestive
+      sac, such as Jack Falstaff bore about him with its measureless capacity
+      for potations and Eastcheap fare. It is a road too in which Mr. Emerson's
+      philosophy will get many sharp raps from an external world of phenomena,
+      in the futility of both his and the Darwinian hypothesis to explain away
+      the independent origination of certain species of plants and animals--new
+      varieties still springing into existence, under favorable conditions, in
+      obedience to the divine fiat, "Let the earth bring forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In laying the foundations of this new science, if science it shall be
+      called, we must insist that the course of nature is uniform, and that,
+      however extended our generalizations in any one of her lines of
+      uniformity, all intermediate, as well as ultimate propositions, must not
+      only be stated with the utmost scientific accuracy, but the logical
+      deductions therefrom must also be uniform, or lie in the path of
+      uniformity. The earliest and latest inductions must either coincide or
+      approximate the same end. No links must be broken, no chasms bridged, in
+      the scientific series. There must be a distinct and separate link
+      connecting each preceding and each succeeding one in the chain. The lowest
+      known mammal must be found in immediate relationship with his higher
+      congener or brother, not in any remote cousinship. There must be no
+      saltatory progress--no leaping over intermediate steps or degrees. The
+      heights of science are not to be scaled <i>per saltum</i>, except as
+      degrees may sometimes be conferred by our universities.[<a href="#foot35">35</a>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are some fish-like animals, say our Darwinian systematizers, like
+      the Lepidosirens and their congeners, with the characteristics of
+      amphibians; and hence they infer that by successive deviations and
+      improvements the lower order has risen into the higher. But out of what
+      page in the volume of nature, in the countless leaves we have turned back,
+      has the immediate congener dropped, that we are obliged to look for the
+      relationship in thirty-fourth cousins? We might as well say that some of
+      the <i>Infusoria</i> possess the same or similar characteristics, and
+      predicate relationship between them and the amphibians; for giants
+      sometimes spring from dwarfs and dwarfs from giants. At all events, our
+      diagnoses must be freed from these intermediate breaks or failures in the
+      chain of continuity, or the doctrine of descent must tumble with the
+      imaginary foundations on which it is built. And bear in mind that the most
+      enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid
+      partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been
+      pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future
+      discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty. But science,
+      inflexible as she is, or ought to be, in her demands, admits of no
+      assumptions, much less sanctions such exceptions and deviations as we
+      constantly find in the Darwinian path of continuity. The eye of
+      imagination can supply nothing to her vision. She is eagle-eyed, and soars
+      into the bright empyrean--does not dive into quagmires and the slime of
+      creation after truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let us see how Mr. Darwin bridges one of the very first chasms he
+      meets with in constructing his chain of generation. He goes back to the
+      first link, or to what he calls primordial generation. Here the leap is
+      from inorganic matter to the lowest form of organic life--from inanimate
+      to animate dust. The chasm is immense, as all will agree. But he bridges
+      it by falling back on his infinitessimal whirligig--his <i>primum mobile</i>--or
+      on the motions of elements as yet inaccessible, except to the eye of
+      imagination. For even Plato's monad, or ultimate atom, was not matter
+      itself, being indivisible, but rather a formal unit or primary constituent
+      of matter, which, like Mr. Darwin's whirligig in its unaggregated form,
+      admits of neither a maximum nor a minimum of comprehension; but rests
+      entirely on imaginary hypothesis. And we may here add that a system which
+      begins in imaginary hypotheses and ends in them--as that of bridging the
+      chasmal difference between a gorilla and a Plato--can be dignified into a
+      science only by a still greater stretch of the imagination--that of
+      bridging the difference between the Darwinian zero and his ninety degrees
+      of development in a Darwin himself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bear in mind, as we proceed, that the function of an argument in
+      philosophy, as in logic, is to prove that a certain relation exists
+      between two concepts or objects of thought, when that relation is not
+      self-evident. In the Darwinian chain we have, as the first link, organic
+      life springing from inorganic matter, without the slightest relation
+      existing between the two, except what may be universally predicated of
+      matter itself, whether animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic; and
+      there is no other affirmative premise, expressing their agreement as
+      extremes, that can possibly admit of an affirmative conclusion. The parts
+      are so separated in thought that no metaphysical or ideal distinction
+      exists to coordinate them in classification. We are simply forced back, in
+      our attempt at classification, upon the intuitions of consciousness, where
+      reason manifestly ceases to enforce its inductions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once
+      aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of
+      these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have
+      before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we
+      follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the
+      blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these
+      intuitions--the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found
+      anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied
+      upon--if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as
+      unreliable--then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two
+      ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No
+      processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the
+      elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual
+      judgment, or lay the foundation of the slightest faith or belief in the
+      world. To deny the primary perception of truth by intuition is as fatal to
+      "Evolution" as to the sublimer teachings of the Bible Genesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But from the very nature of our being, as well as the primary <i>datum</i>
+      of consciousness itself, we must rest the validity of these intuitions on
+      something, and that, something more than a finite intelligence; and since
+      science, with all her knowledge methodically digested and arranged,
+      furnishes no clue to the mystery, we are left to the higher sources of
+      inspiration to reach it. And this inspiration, however it may be derived,
+      necessarily becomes a part of our intuitions, since it addresses itself to
+      the strongest possible cravings of the human soul, and is accepted as its
+      inseparable companion and guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall we build our faith then on the Divine Word,--on the Word that was in
+      the beginning with God, and, when incarnate, <i>was</i> God,--or on Mr.
+      Darwin's little whirligig that originally set everything in motion, and
+      has only to go on <i>ad infinitum</i> to whirl us out a God, as it has
+      already whirled us out a Darwinian universe without one. For if this
+      ovulistic whirligig has bridged the chasmal difference between protoplasm
+      and man, since the transition from inorganic matter to organic life, the
+      process has only to be indefinitely extended to bridge the chasm between
+      man and Deity, or between finite and infinite intelligence. This gives us
+      nature evolving a God, instead of the doctrine of the old Theogonies, of a
+      God presiding from all eternity over nature; one "who laid the foundations
+      of the earth that it should not be removed forever; who stretchest out the
+      heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+      waters; who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These evolutionists manifestly get the cart before the horse in their
+      category of cosmological events. It is not inert matter organizing itself
+      into life, nor any mode of physical or chemical action, nor any mere
+      manifestation of motion or of heat, nor any other conceivable correlation
+      of natural forces. None of these has enabled us to penetrate the
+      mysterious <i>inner-chamber</i> of life itself. For reasons obviously
+      connected with our own welfare, He, from whom alone are "the issues of
+      life," seems to have ordained that we should fathom the depths of both
+      physical and chemical force, and beneficently wield and direct them to our
+      own uses. But this vital force; this something that stands apart from and
+      is essentially different from all other kinds of force, is of a nature
+      that baffles all our efforts to approach. The power to grasp it, or even
+      to penetrate in the slightest degree its mysteries, is delegated to none.
+      All attempts to lay bare this principle of vitality, or level the barriers
+      that separate it from physical or chemical action, have utterly failed. We
+      know no more of its essence now than was known a thousand years ago, and
+      know no less than will be known a thousand years hence. To become masters
+      of the mystery, we must enter the impenetrable veil within which the
+      Infinite Intelligence of the universe presides,--who, we are told,
+      "sendeth forth his spirit, and we are created, who taketh away our breath,
+      we die and return to our dust." [<a href="#foot36">36</a>] We are just as
+      much bewildered in respect to this vital principle in our classifications
+      of the myriads of little creatures careering over the field of the
+      microscope, as when we turn to the most marked formations of genera and
+      species in geological distribution. The great trouble with Mr. Darwin's <i>vinculum</i>
+      is, that its weakest links are precisely where the strongest should be
+      found, and <i>vice versa</i>. With a candor rarely displayed by a writer
+      who is spinning a theory, he admits this. The geological record is not
+      what he would have it to be. Whole chapters are gone where they are most
+      needed, and nature's lithography seems constantly at fault. Independent
+      species are now and then springing up where derivatives should be looked
+      for, while derivatives are everywhere disappearing in non-derivatives.
+      Many of the middle Tertiary <i>molusca</i>, and a large proportion of the
+      later Tertiary period, are specifically identical with the living species,
+      of to-day. What has "natural selection" been doing for this family in the
+      last million years or more? Manifestly nothing, and less than nothing, for
+      some of the species have dropped out altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These facts, and hundreds of others like them, are constantly obtruding
+      themselves upon our attention to show, in harmony with the Bible Genesis,
+      the immutability of species--the absolute fixity of types--rather than
+      their variability, as claimed. If nature abhors anything more than a <i>vacuum</i>,
+      it is manifestly any marked transition from fixed types, and she thunders
+      her edicts against it in the non-fertility of all hybrids. The doctrine of
+      variation lacks the all-essential element of continuity, and is oftener at
+      war with the theory of the "selection of the fittest," than it is with the
+      selection of the "unfit." The leap from Lepidosirens to Amphibians is no
+      greater than the interval between any two species of animals or plants yet
+      discovered, either fossil or living. The intervals are as numerous as the
+      species themselves, and everywhere constitute great and sudden leaps, or
+      such transitional changes as "natural selection" could not have effected
+      independently of intervening forms--those that nowhere exist in nature,
+      and never have existed, if we are to credit geologic and paleontologic
+      records. There is everywhere similarity of structure, but not identity;
+      and the nearer we approach to identity of structure the wider the
+      divergence in similarity of characteristics. A bird may be taught to talk
+      and sing snatches of music. But no monkey has ever been able to articulate
+      human sounds, much less give them rhythmical utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take the case of the wild pigeon, a subject that especially delights Mr.
+      Darwin. Most of the deviations are confined to the domesticated breeds,
+      and none of these rank in strength, hardiness, capability of flight, or
+      symmetry of structure, with the wild or typical bird. There are
+      well-defined deviations, but no sensible improvements, except to the eye
+      of the bird-fancier. The deviations are simply entailed weaknesses, or the
+      very reverse of what should appear from the "selection of the fittest."
+      The fact undeniably is, that these variations are almost wholly
+      abnormal--mere exaggerated characteristics, induced in the first instance,
+      perhaps, by high cultivation and close in-and-in breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turn these abnormal varieties loose, let them go back to the aboriginal
+      stock, and these characteristics will rapidly disappear; that is, they
+      will ultimately lose themselves or melt away in the original type. Mr.
+      Darwin admits that the tendency will be to reversion, but he insists,
+      manifestly without any positive proof therefor, that the greater tendency
+      is to new centres of attraction, and not necessarily the primitive one.
+      But this is mere assumption--sheer begging the question on his
+      part,--since all the oscillations are incontestibly about the original or
+      type centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same may be said of the typical races of men, like the negro and wild
+      Indian of our prairies. You may lift them out of their primitive
+      condition--temporarily suspend, if you please so to put it, their
+      primordial attraction,--but, left again to themselves, they will go back
+      to the original type; that is, their offspring will again infest the
+      jungles and roam their native hunting-grounds. The process here is the
+      very reverse of the Darwinian theory. Reversion, as a rule, follows the
+      degeneracy of types, instead of there being any favorable homogeneous
+      result, springing from a new centre of attraction. The Indian makes a
+      splendid savage, but a very poor white man. Think of Red Jacket taking the
+      part of Mercutio in the play or enacting the more valiant <i>role</i> of
+      Falstaff in King Henry the Fourth. An infusion of white blood does not
+      help the matter, but rather makes it worse. Generally, the meanest Indian
+      on the continent is your half-breed, and among the negroes there is no
+      term so expressive of the contempt of that race, as that applied by them
+      to a mulatto. The present condition of Mexico affords a striking
+      exemplification of this law of reversion. The inheritable characteristics
+      or variations, produced from an infusion of Spanish blood, are rapidly
+      disappearing--the native blood whipping out the European. The potency is
+      in the inferior blood, simply because it is the predominating one. The
+      result has been no homogeneous new race, but a reversion, now manifestly
+      in progress, to the type centre or aboriginal stock. And the curse
+      pronounced by Ezekiel upon mongrel tribes--"woe unto the mingled peoples"
+      may have a significance in this connection worth considering; but it
+      manifestly falls outside the scope of our present inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In considering the embryological structure of man, and the homologies he
+      therein presents to the lower animals, Mr. Darwin thus conclusively (in
+      his judgment) remarks: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
+      quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in
+      his habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Darwin's pronominal "we," in this connection, admits of
+      qualification. He can hardly speak for all the scientific world at once.
+      The philosophical maxim of Sir Isaac Newton--<i>hypotheses non fingo</i>--I
+      build no hypotheses, make no suppositions, but adhere to facts--has a few
+      followers still left. But what are Mr. Darwin's facts? Has he yet
+      discovered the caudal man, except as the ever-fertile Mr. Stanley heard of
+      one in Africa? And where is his monkey that first lost the prehensile
+      power to climb trees? For bear in mind that it was the loss of this
+      prehensile power that resulted in the caudal atrophy of our monkey
+      progenitors, <i>who became men simply because they were tailless monkeys!</i>
+      They had lost their power to climb trees, and accordingly had no longer
+      any use for tails to let themselves down from the limbs. A "beneficent
+      necessity" therefore, according to Mr. Emerson, dropped the tail as
+      something decidedly "unfit." For the simplest tyro in Darwinian philosophy
+      will see that the loss of the Catarrhine monkey's tail, if it ever
+      occurred, could not have resulted from the "selection of the fittest." The
+      deeper Emersonian philosophy of the "rejection of the unfit," affords the
+      only solution of the difficulty, and then only on the assumption that the
+      tail is an unfit appendage for the monkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the loss of his tail, in the light of this new genesis, the monkey
+      necessarily ceased to be arboreal in his habits. He could no longer
+      subsist on the fruits and nuts of trees, or take refuge therein from his
+      enemies. He had to go to work and make weapons to defend himself--to
+      construct tools--make and set traps, live on his wits, and not on his
+      prehensile power to climb trees. He soon discovered, of course, that the
+      longest pole knocked the persimmon. This was his first intellectual stride
+      towards the future Edison. From the simplest sort of Grahamitic
+      philosopher he passed into the robust, beef-eating Englishman. But this
+      was not all. As an arboreal gymnast, he was manifestly on his way to more
+      masterly feats of agility than ever,--those dependent, not on muscular
+      function, but on the nervous action of the brain and spinal marrow.
+      Necessity became with him the "mother of invention," and how admirably he
+      improved under this maternal instructor we are left to infer from the
+      paramount conclusion of Mr. Darwin, <i>that the demoralized monkey became
+      the incipient man</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
+      differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the loss
+      of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's brain?
+      or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
+      differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous and
+      demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every bone,
+      muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the same. The
+      chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are differently
+      bundled and differently strung. In intonations of voice--symmetry of arms,
+      legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic and land habits, the frog
+      is a much nearer approach to man than the monkey, as all caricaturists,
+      delineating aldermanic proportions, will agree. And Mr. Darwin might have
+      immortalized himself by deriving the builders of the ancient
+      pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats and croakers of the Swiss
+      lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For everybody knows, or thinks he
+      knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he didn't wag it off, he certainly
+      absorbed its waggishness as a distinguishing characteristic of the "coming
+      man"--the future Artemas Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral
+      origin will also account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all
+      human juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
+      relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
+      encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
+      on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
+      agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
+      loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor does
+      he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated development." He is
+      more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than any other, and finds
+      the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That is, he assumes that
+      among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the Tertiary or some other
+      period, some female monkeys were less hirsute than others, and that they
+      naturally preferred males possessing similar characteristics. These
+      divergencies were thus commenced, and, by continuous "sexual selection,"
+      the infirmity (for such he regards the loss of hair) was propagated until
+      the race was almost entirely denuded or bereft of this covering. In the
+      same way he accounts for nearly all the differentiations of the race,
+      among the various tribes now or formerly inhabiting the earth. All have
+      sprung from the same semi-human progenitors--<i>apes that lost their
+      capacity to subsist as apes, and hence found it necessary to subsist as
+      men</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The law of degeneracy has, therefore, had quite as much to do with human
+      origins as that of progressive development. In fact, it is the paramount
+      law from a Darwinian stand-point. For the loss of hair and of the
+      prehensile power to climb trees are both conceded by Mr. Darwin to be
+      serious defects and drawbacks in the ape family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the law of sexual selection, as treated by the evolutionists, is not
+      scientifically accurate, nor is it true in fact. The loving tendency of
+      nature is to opposites, not likes. The positive and negative poles are
+      those that play into each other with most marvellous effect. Each repels
+      its like and rushes to the embrace of its opposite. Extremes lovingly meet
+      everywhere. A brunette selects a blonde and a blonde a brunette, as a
+      general rule in matrimony. A tall man or woman, with rare exceptions,
+      chooses a short companion for life. Dark eyes delight in those that are
+      light, and <i>vice-versa</i>. Everywhere nature seeks diversity, not
+      similitude. The gayest and brightest feathered songster craves
+      companionship in modest and unobtrusive colors. Diversity is the law of
+      life, as equality, or versimilitude, is that of death. Neither natural
+      selection, nor sexual selection, runs counter to this law. If Mr. Darwin's
+      theory were true, that likes selected likes, then the two marked extremes
+      which should have characterized the race, soon after its emergence from
+      the semi-human state, should have been giants and pigmies, Gargantuas and
+      Lilliputs. Otherwise "sexual selection," as treated by its author, plays
+      no intelligible part in the economy of nature, except to counterbalance
+      variability, not to propagate it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Darwinian assumption that the primeval man, or his immediate
+      ape-like progenitor, came through "natural selection," that is, through
+      the "survival of the fittest," is subject to one or two other objections
+      which we shall briefly notice. And the first objection is not altogether a
+      technical one. The term "fittest," as applied to a monkey, has at once a
+      definite and comprehensive significance to us. It implies the presence of
+      whatever is most perfect of its kind in the monkey <i>as</i> a monkey, and
+      not in the monkey <i>as</i> something else than a monkey. They are all
+      admirably adapted for climbing trees; and it is this adaptation that
+      secures them safety, or complete immunity, in shelter from their enemies.
+      To say that nature selects the fittest for them--for any species of
+      monkey--by converting their forefeet into rudimentary hands, with a loss
+      of prehension and no corresponding advantages in locomotion, is to use
+      language without any appreciable significance to us. We can only say that
+      what is fittest for the monkey is ill-fitted for man, and the reverse.
+      This is all we can definitely predicate of them, from what we know of
+      their anatomical structure, and the diversified uses to which it may be
+      put.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, as the Bible genesis shows, that every living thing is
+      perfect of its kind, and whatever is perfect admits of no Darwinian
+      variations or improvements for the better. And the simple statement of
+      this undeniable proposition is, we submit, a complete refutation of
+      Darwinism. When the waters and the earth were commanded to bring forth
+      abundantly of every living creature and every living thing, "it was so,
+      and God saw that it was good," that is, everything perfect of its kind,
+      and in its kind. With this single limitation as to kind, a rattlesnake is
+      no less perfect than a Plato or a John Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we consider man's upright position; the firmness and steadiness with
+      which he plants his foot upon the earth; when we examine the mechanism of
+      his hand, and the wonderful and almost unlimited range it possesses for
+      diversified use; when we see how ill-fitted he is for climbing trees, yet
+      how express and admirable for climbing among the stars, even to the
+      outermost milky-way, the idea that what is fittest for him is fit for the
+      chattering monkey, is too absurd to give us pause. And yet how does Mr.
+      Darwin know that the monkey has been climbing up, all these hundred
+      thousand or million years, into man, as one of the congenital freaks of
+      nature, and not man shambling down into the monkey as a reverse congenital
+      freak. Children have sometimes been born with a singular resemblance to
+      the ape family, but no ape has ever, to Mr. Darwin's knowledge, produced
+      issue more manlike than itself. The divergencies run the wrong way to meet
+      the conditions of the development theory. We have had nearly five thousand
+      years in which to mark these transitional changes, and yet the monkey of
+      to-day is identical with that painted on the walls of ancient Meroe. In
+      all this time he has made no advance in the genetic relation; and if we
+      turn back the lithographic pages of nature for a hundred times five
+      thousand years, we shall find no essential departure from aboriginal
+      types.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Darwinian hypothesis admits of a more conclusive answer than we
+      have yet given. Past time, it will be conceded, is theoretically if not
+      actually infinite; and in all past time, nature has been tugging away at
+      Mr. Darwin's problem of the "survival of the fittest." It is no two
+      hundred and fifty thousand years, nor two hundred and fifty millions, but
+      an infinite duration of past time that covers the period in which she has
+      been wrestling with this problem. How successfully has she solved it? In
+      the Darwinian sense of the term "fittest," she has not so much as stated
+      her first equation or extracted the root of her first power. She is
+      manifestly as much puzzled over the problem as Mr. Darwin himself. He
+      fails to see that the "survival of the fittest," necessarily implies, or
+      carries with it, the correlative proposition,--the "non-survival of the
+      unfit." And when such a law has been operative for an infinite duration of
+      past time, the "unfit," however infinitely distributed at first, should
+      have disappeared altogether, many thousands, if not millions, of years
+      ago. If the evolutionists are dealing with vast problems, and assigning to
+      nature, unlimited factors to express the totality of her unerring
+      operations, they must be careful to limit the time in which any one of her
+      given labors is to be accomplished. If she makes any progress at all, an
+      infinite duration of past time should enable her to complete her work just
+      as effectually as an infinite duration of time to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But by what law of "natural selection," appertaining to a single pair of
+      old world monkeys, have their offspring advanced to this regal state of
+      manhood, while all other pairs have remained stationary, or precisely
+      where they were two hundred and fifty thousand years ago or more? Why this
+      exceptional divergence in the case of a single pair of monkeys? Why this
+      anomalous, aberrant, and thoroughly eccentric movement on the part of
+      nature? We had supposed that her operations were uniform--conformable to
+      fixed laws of movement. The doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"
+      implies this. Why then, should nature, in her unerring operations, have
+      selected the fittest in respect to a single pair of Catarrhine monkeys,
+      and at the same time rejected the fittest in the case of a million other
+      pairs? If she had selected only the fittest in respect to this old world
+      stock of monkeys, the entire Catarrhine family should have disappeared in
+      the next higher or fitter group--a group nowhere to be found in geological
+      distribution. The break between man and this Catarrhine monkey covers
+      quite a series of links in the genetic vinculum;[<a href="#foot37">37</a>]
+      and yet between the two we find no high form of a low type fitting into a
+      low form of a high type, as we manifestly should, to account for all the
+      diversified changes that must have taken place in the interim. And what is
+      true of the types is measurably true of the classes within the types, as
+      well as of the orders within the classes. Wide deviations in forms, as in
+      characteristics, would seem to be the invariable rule; the blending of
+      type into type, except perhaps in remote relationships, is nowhere
+      visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if "variation" and "natural selection" have played important parts in
+      the economy of nature, why may not "specific creation" have played <i>its</i>
+      part also? Positive science can hardly flatter itself with the belief that
+      it is rolling back the mystery of the universe to a point beyond which
+      "specific creation" might not have commenced, or the divine fiat been put
+      forth. To believe in the possibility of a rational synthesis, limited to
+      sensible experience, or phenomenal facts within our reach, that shall
+      climb from law to law, or from concrete fact to abstract conception, until
+      it shall reach the <i>Ultima Thule</i> of all law, is to carry the faith
+      of the scientist beyond the most transcendental belief of the theologian,
+      and make him a greater dupe to his illusions than was ever cloistered in a
+      monastery or affected austerity therein as a balm to the flesh. We may
+      substitute new dogmatisms for old ones, but we can never postulate a
+      principle that shall make the general laws of nature any less mysterious
+      than the partial or exceptional, or that shall in the long run, render
+      "natural selection" any more comprehensible, or acceptable to the rational
+      intuition, than "specific creation." For while one class of scientists is
+      climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law
+      that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more
+      analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by
+      divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief
+      of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage
+      of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the
+      human mind is ever towards this abstract conception--this one
+      all-encompassing law of the universe. It steadily speculates in this
+      direction, and some of the highest triumphs of our age, in physical as
+      well as metaphysical science, are measurably due to this tendency. The
+      scientific mind is not confined wholly to experimental research. It is
+      stimulated to higher contemplations, and is constantly disposed to make
+      larger and more comprehensive groupings of analogous facts. It is fast
+      coming to regard light, heat, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,
+      chemical affinity, molecular force, and even Mr. Darwin's little
+      whirligig, as only so many manifestations or expressions of one and the
+      same force in the universe--that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force
+      (not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens,
+      "binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his
+      season, and guides Arcturus with his suns."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the boast of the Darwinian systematizers that their development
+      theory not only harmonizes with, but admirably supplements and out-rounds
+      the grander speculation of Laplace, termed the "Nebular Hypothesis," which
+      regards the universe as having originally consisted of uniformly diffused
+      matter, filling all space, which subsequently became aggregated by
+      gravitation, much after the manner of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig, into
+      an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in
+      space. Of the correctness of this hypothesis it is unnecessary to speak.
+      It is to the Darwinian speculation what the infinite is to the
+      infinitessimal, and we only refer to it to bring out the vastness of the
+      conception as compared to the latter theory, and to predicate thereon the
+      more conclusive induction that an Infinite Intelligence directs and
+      superintends all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an area in the Milky-way not exceeding one-tenth of the moon's disc,
+      Mr. Herschel computes the number of stars at not less than twenty
+      thousand, with clusters of nebulae lying still beyond. As we know that no
+      bodies shining by reflected light could be visible at such enormous
+      distances, we are left to conclude that each of these twinkling points is
+      a sun, dispensing light and heat to probably as many planets as hold their
+      courses about the central orb in our own system. From the superior
+      magnitude of many of the stars, as compared with the sun, we may
+      reasonably infer that many of these vast sun-systems occupy a much larger
+      field in space than our own. This would give an area in space of not less
+      than six thousand millions of miles as the field occupied by each of these
+      sun-systems. And as the distance between each of these systems and its
+      nearest neighbor is probably not less than that of our sun from the
+      nearest star, we have the enormous and inconceivable distance of not less
+      than nineteen billions of miles separating each one of these twenty
+      thousand stars or sun-systems, occupying a space in the heavens apparently
+      no bigger than a man's hand. And yet Infinity, as we apprehend the term,
+      lies beyond this vast cluster of constellated worlds! Where is Mr.
+      Darwin's little whirligig in the comparison, or Mr. Emerson's vegetal
+      stomach, or Mr. Herbert Spencer's "potential factors," to express the
+      sum-total of all this totality,--this gigantic assemblage of stars
+      clustered about a single point in the Milky-way? The human mind absolutely
+      reels--staggers bewildered and amazed--under the load of conceptions
+      imposed by these few twinkling stars, and is ready to exclaim,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Oh, star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,<br /> To waft us back a
+        message of despair?"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible
+      in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with
+      inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of
+      the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how
+      unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of <i>Mr. Darwin's little
+      whirligig as the author of it all!</i> No wonder the inspired Psalmist
+      exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
+      his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens
+      declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the
+      immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration
+      lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem,
+      while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing
+      beneath the glebe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre
+      of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of
+      sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the
+      Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding
+      all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central
+      point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with
+      nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must
+      be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe,
+      to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical
+      induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their
+      orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why
+      not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and
+      utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It
+      can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it
+      has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our
+      post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that
+      science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not
+      Infinite Intelligence accomplish?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a
+      coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal
+      only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize
+      quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the
+      theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to
+      a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in
+      climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when
+      concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the
+      ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G.
+      Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also
+      insists that when <i>a priori</i> speculation is lost in abstract
+      conceptions, the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions
+      of consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is
+      undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we
+      stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if
+      in the august presence of Deity itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of
+      consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the
+      universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In
+      supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of
+      Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of
+      aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still
+      going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or
+      energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself
+      in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the
+      universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential
+      energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already
+      resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other
+      heavenly bodies.[<a href="#foot38">38</a>] All the exterior planets, or a
+      majority of them at least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled
+      worlds, or those in which all life has hopelessly ceased and become
+      extinct. All has utterly disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's
+      couplets,
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,<br /> Nor glass can
+        reach--from zoophyte to man."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many
+      immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science,
+      except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe,
+      resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent
+      clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian
+      whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream,
+      which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun
+      extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless,
+      and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it!
+      Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers,
+      and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a <i>credo</i>
+      only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable the
+      simple faith of the star-led Magi, who
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Deeming the light that in the east was seen An earnest and a prophecy of
+      rest To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to
+      the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Footnotes
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot1" id="foot1"></a>1. : It may be proper, however, to state
+      that the tenth and concluding chapter was originally written as a lecture,
+      and delivered about a year ago in New Haven, Boston, and at other points.
+      A request for its publication has induced the author to place it in this
+      volume, with the portion referring to the Bible genesis omitted. It will
+      be found germane to the general subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot2" id="foot2"></a>2. : "Without this latent presence of the
+      'I am,' all modes of existence in the external world flit before us as
+      colored shadows, with no greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of
+      a rock hath in the gliding stream, or the rainbow on the fast-sailing rain
+      storm."--<i>Coleridge's</i> "<i>Comments on Essays</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot3" id="foot3"></a>3. : And science that is not purely
+      inductive--i.e. primarily based on the inviolability of our intuitions--is
+      no science at all, but the sheerest possible speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot4" id="foot4"></a>4. : This presence of an active living
+      principle in nature, one originally assigned as the "<i>divina particula
+      aur&aelig;</i>" of every living thing, is frequently referred to in the
+      higher inspirational moods of our poets. Wordsworth exquisitely refers to
+      it in the following lines of his "Excursion:"--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote class="verse">
+      <p>
+        "To every form of being is assigned<br /> An <i>active</i> principle:
+        howe'er removed<br /> From sense and observation, it subsists<br /> In all
+        things, in all nature, in the stars<br /> Of azure heaven, the unenduring
+        clouds; <br /> In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone<br /> That paves
+        the brooks."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot5" id="foot5"></a>5. : The existence of vital units is
+      conceded by some of the staunchest materialists, such as Herbert Spencer,
+      Professor Bastian and others. Professor Bastian says: "The countless
+      myriads of living units which have been evolved in different ages of the
+      world's history, must, in each period, have given rise to innumerable
+      multitudes of what have been called 'trees of life.'" He insists, however,
+      that they have been "evolved" from something, or by some unknown process.
+      But we shall show further on that a "unit" can neither be <i>evolved</i>
+      nor <i>involved</i>, and that this is as true of vital units as of the
+      mathematical or chemical unit. Neither evolution nor involution will ever
+      effect the value of a unit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot6" id="foot6"></a>6. : According to Aristotle, the great
+      world-<i>ordainer</i> is the constant world-<i>sustainer</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot7" id="foot7"></a>7. : The definition which Professor
+      Robinson, in his Lexicon of the New Testament, gives of the word &sigma;&pi;&epsilon;&rho;&mu;&alpha;,
+      as connected with the "divine life," entirely harmonizes with this view of
+      the subject. He says: Trop. I John 3, 9, &pi;ἃ&sigmaf; ό &gamma;&epsilon;&gamma;&epsilon;&nu;&eta;&mu;έ&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf;
+      ἐ&kappa; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon; &thetasym;&epsilon;&omicron;&upsilon;
+      &sigma;&pi;έ&rho;&mu;&alpha; ἀ&upsilon;&tau;&omicron;&nu; (&thetasym;&epsilon;ὄ&nu;)
+      &epsilon;&nu; ᾶ&nu;&tau;ῶ &pi;&epsilon;&nu;&epsilon;ὶ <i>i.e.</i> the germ
+      or principle of divine life through which he is begotten of god, &tau;&omicron;
+      &pi;&nu;&epsilon;ὒ&mu;&alpha;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot8" id="foot8"></a>8. : Professor Schmidt, of the University
+      of Strasburg, who insists that species are only relatively stable, admits
+      that they remain persistent as long as they exist under the same external
+      conditions. Time is, therefore, not a factor in the mutation of species.
+      Nor are environing conditions factors, except as a failure of conditions
+      results in the disappearance of species, as the presence of conditions
+      results in their appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot9" id="foot9"></a>9. : Says M. Ch. Bonnet, in his "La Paling&eacute;u&eacute;sie
+      Philosophique;" "Il est de la plus parfaite &eacute;vidence que la matiere
+      est susceptible d'une infinit&eacute; de mouvemens divers, et de
+      modifications diverses," and this is the universal claim of the
+      materialists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot10" id="foot10"></a>10. : Professor Burdach (as trad, par
+      Jourdan), in speaking of the productive power of nature, says, "Limit&eacute;e
+      quant &aacute; l' &eacute;tendue de ses manifestations, elle continue
+      toujottrs d' agir pour la conservation de ce qui a &eacute;t&eacute; cr&eacute;&eacute;,
+      et, quoiqu' elle ne maintenue les formes organiques sup&eacute;rieures que
+      par la seule propagation, il ne r&eacute;pugne point au bon sens de penser
+      qu' aujourd' hui encore elle a la puissance de produire les formes inf&eacute;rieures
+      avec des el&eacute;ments h&eacute;t&eacute;rog&eacute;nes, comme elle a cr&eacute;&eacute;
+      originairement tout ce qui poss&eacute;de l' organisation." This shows
+      that its author believed in the possibility of the "superior organic
+      forms," like the mastodon, megatherium, etc. from the "heterogenetic
+      elements"--those undergoing every conceivable change--as well as the
+      "inferior forms." At all events, it is a legitimate induction from
+      materialistic premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot11" id="foot11"></a>11. : This point is conclusively made by
+      Professor Burdach, who says (we quote from Jourdan); "La tendance
+      interieure &aacute; la configuration existe avant sa manifestation." And
+      by his <i>tendance interieure</i> he must mean some vital or other law,
+      equivalent to an <i>entia</i> in matter, which results <i>in</i>, not <i>from</i>
+      manifestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot12" id="foot12"></a>12. : Goethe borrowed his idea of an
+      archetypal world from Plato and the Eleatic school. They held that the
+      world was originated, and not eternal; that it was framed by the Creator
+      after a perfect archetype, one eternally existing in the divine mind, if
+      not an actual soul-world of which our own is but the reflex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot13" id="foot13"></a>13. : In a note to Prof. Bastian's
+      "Beginnings of Life" (vol II. p. 537) an important fact is mentioned as
+      obtained from the writings of Dr. Schneider, to wit, that <i>Nematoids</i>
+      (microscopical forms) may be "obtained at will," almost as readily as
+      mushrooms, by a process entirely independent of spores. For instance,
+      small pieces of beef were carefully examined to see if they contained any
+      of the ova of Nematoids, and, finding none, they were buried in a small
+      quantity of earth (also carefully examined for the presence of Nematoids
+      or their ova) in a gallipot. "After three weeks," says Prof. B. "this
+      earth was found to be absolutely swarming with two kinds of
+      Nematoids--quite different from any forms which I had previously, seen,
+      although I had been seeking them for more than two years previously in all
+      sorts of situations." The reason why he had not found them previously, was
+      because the "necessary conditions" for their appearance had not been
+      obtained by him, or he had not sought for them in their proper
+      environment. They were not produced "at will," but were the natural
+      outgrowth of conditions, as much so as the spores of fungi, which make
+      their appearance whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions
+      exist. According to Dr. Gros, it takes about three weeks for these
+      Nematoid forms to develop into a reproductive state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot14" id="foot14"></a>14. : The necessity of turning plants and
+      animals into "tramps" is just as great in the case of "Evolution" as in
+      that of "specific creation in pairs." In both cases, we must insist upon
+      geneological consanguinity. For the chances of any two highly specialized
+      forms, originally starting on different lines of divergence, and
+      ultimately reaching individual identity, both in form and characteristics,
+      is an impossible problem in the determination of chances. Consequently,
+      Mr. Darwin finds the necessity of accounting for the presence of northern
+      forms in the southern hemisphere, and the reverse, just as great as in the
+      Linn&aelig;an theory, which was fully accepted by Cuvier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot15" id="foot15"></a>15. : Burdach, in his "<i>Trait&eacute;
+      Physiologie" (Trad. par Jourdan</i>. 1837) says: "Effectivement nous
+      rencontrons des traces de vie dans toute existence quelconque." This is as
+      broad a panspermic statement as can be made, and is only true of inorganic
+      matter so far as vegetable life is concerned, including such infusorial,
+      mycologic, and cryptogamic forms as may lie so near to the "force
+      vegetative" of Needham as to be indistinguishable from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot16" id="foot16"></a>16. : In the case of volcanic islands,
+      the upheavals were undoubtedly accompanied by deposits of mud, sand (ocean
+      detritus), marine vegetation, and more or less animal matter, and these
+      organic substances were washed down by the rains into the broken valleys
+      and plains below, when land vegetation almost immediately made its
+      appearance; not because seeds may have drifted thither by any of the
+      different agencies that have been mentioned, but because organic matter
+      can no more help bringing forth life in some form, when conditions favor,
+      than salt water, when exposed to evaporation, can help crystallizing into
+      its symmetrically-arranged salts. And the same would be true of all the
+      coral islands, bringing up the organic matter of the sea to the influence
+      of the light, the rains, and the dews. The islands thus formed in the
+      Pacific Ocean begin to exhibit vegetable life almost as soon as they make
+      their appearance above the reefs, and a line of sea-beach is formed about
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot17" id="foot17"></a>17. : These, while presenting the most
+      varied and diverse forms of infusorial life, are nevertheless the most
+      constant and abundant type. They abound more or less in all organic
+      infusions. Ehrenberg, however, holds that they are no more animal than
+      vegetal forms. They vary in length from 1/15000 to 1/2000 of an inch, and
+      are consequently too minute to be satisfactorily classified in respect to
+      all their diversified characteristics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot18" id="foot18"></a>18. : The extent of the southern ice-cap
+      may at least be approximately reached from explorations already made.
+      Capt. Weddell, in 1823, extended his explorations southward to within
+      about 15&deg; of the south pole, where he found an open sea. Capt. Ross,
+      in 1842, approached to within about 13&deg; of the same pole, without
+      serious obstruction. It is true that, in the following year, he
+      encountered ice barriers near the line of the antarctic circle, but they
+      were floating barriers coming down from Weddell's open sea. Capt. Wilkes,
+      in 1840, explored a considerable portion of the Antarctic Continent, lying
+      almost entirely within the antarctic circle. Other explorations have been
+      made, showing that the southern ice-cap does not probably extend,
+      continuously at least, much farther north than 78&deg; or 80&deg;, or to
+      within some ten or twelve degrees of the south pole, independently of the
+      packs of drifting ice in the otherwise open seas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot19" id="foot19"></a>19. : The truth or falsity of "Evolution"
+      depends entirely on the successful solution of this problem, for the
+      chances are quintillions to ones that no two identical forms could have
+      originated from different centres, or from the same centre on divergent
+      lines, and ever reached identically the same results. And how any two
+      forms should happen to be sexually paired, on the same or different lines
+      of divergence, is one of those inexplicable mysteries which must puzzle
+      Herbert Spencer in all his labyrinthian searches into "Force-correlation,"
+      "Differentiation," "the Dynamic Force of Molecules," etc., etc. However
+      successful he may be in other directions, he will inevitably fail in this.
+      We must fall back on the grand Old Bible genesis for the solution of this
+      difficulty, where every living thing was commanded to produce seed, or
+      multiply and replenish the waters and the earth with offspring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot20" id="foot20"></a>20. : These transcendental or ideal forms
+      may be said to correspond to the "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are
+      the eternal, immutable principles which are discernible to the eye of the
+      soul, as the sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of
+      the body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a higher
+      realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of which the
+      objective reality is but the shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot21" id="foot21"></a>21. : Herbert Spencer may be quoted as
+      authority on this point. He says: "There is invariably, and necessarily, a
+      conformity between the vital functions of any organism, and the <i>conditions</i>
+      in which it is placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a
+      certain range of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and
+      elevation." And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora,
+      each specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north
+      or south from the thermal equator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot22" id="foot22"></a>22. : Speaking of the ultimate principles
+      or elements of matter, Plato is quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with
+      modest diffidence, "God alone, and those whom he loves among men, know
+      what they are." It is only those who seek to eliminate God from the
+      universe that speak with confident flippancy on the subject of molecular
+      machinery and force-correlations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot23" id="foot23"></a>23. : As long as the evolutionists cannot
+      agree among themselves as to what constitutes the process of evolution, it
+      can hardly be expected that the public will accept their speculations as
+      conclusive inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to
+      the doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many
+      objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word
+      Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot24" id="foot24"></a>24. : "Know ye not that ye are the temple
+      of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot25" id="foot25"></a>25. : Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the
+      "Protoplasmic Theory of Life," says: "Matter cannot change its state of
+      motion or rest without the influence of some force from without. True
+      spontaneity of movement is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what
+      we call dead matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an
+      exciting cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial
+      impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this "force
+      from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle operating to effect
+      the otherwise impossible change in matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot26" id="foot26"></a>26. : A favorite set-phrase of Professor
+      Bastian in speaking of morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes
+      calls them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot27" id="foot27"></a>27. : That great and justly celebrated
+      naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of the universal origination of the lower
+      forms of animal life by a process termed, in his time, "spontaneous
+      generation," says: "There are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal
+      and vegetable, which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'mol&eacute;cules
+      organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a constant
+      succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for some time
+      associated with the Abb&eacute; Needham in his experiments in vital
+      directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by no means
+      certain that he did not accept the Abb&eacute;'s "force v&eacute;g&eacute;tative"
+      in place of his more materialistic views respecting "mol&eacute;cules
+      organiques." At all events, his statement that as many living things
+      appear in nature independently of reproducing causes as by successive
+      generation, is no doubt true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot28" id="foot28"></a>28. : M. Tr&eacute;viranus, who followed
+      Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask experimentations, first noticed
+      the important fact that the animalcul&aelig; appearing in different
+      organic infusions, depended on the nature and quality of the infusions
+      themselves, and that the changed conditions of the same infusion produced
+      new and independent forms of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot29" id="foot29"></a>29. : Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet,
+      says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin &eacute;toit la religion &eacute;ternelle
+      des Essences; parce que tout ce qui existe existoit comme de toute
+      &eacute;ternit&eacute; comme possible ou en id&eacute;e dans l'entendement
+      de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette v&eacute;rit&eacute; sublime en d'autres
+      termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute Eternit&eacute; dans
+      l'entendement du Supr&ecirc;me Architecte. Tou tes les parties de
+      l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome &eacute;toient deffin&eacute;s dans
+      ce plan. Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux diff&eacute;rentes
+      pieces de ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs repr&eacute;sentations.
+      Chaque etre y &eacute;toit figur&eacute; par ses characteres propres: et
+      l'acte par lequel la Souveraine Puissance a r&eacute;alis&eacute; ce plan,
+      est ce que nous nommons la Cr&eacute;ation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot30" id="foot30"></a>30. : Here is a fact given us by Dr. F.
+      Hall, of Wallingford, Conn.: In a peat meadow in that town, owned by him,
+      which was at no time subject to overflow, a large quantity of peat had
+      been removed at different intervals of time, when the excavations
+      naturally filled with water. In these excavations there appeared not only
+      the <i>Cyprinidae</i> in considerable numbers, but fresh water clams which
+      grew to be as large as those in the most favored streams. They made their
+      appearance the very first season after the peat was removed, and have
+      flourished there ever since. In no other portions of the meadow were there
+      any fish or clams ever noticed before, nor was there any other source of
+      water-supply than the rain-falls in that locality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot31" id="foot31"></a>31. : Professor Beale, in one of his very
+      latest works says: "Of the chemical and physical forms of energy something
+      is known, but of the relationship of the so called <i>vital</i> energy,
+      nothing has been proved. We only know that the influence it exerts is
+      altogether different from that which has been traced to physical and
+      chemical energy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot32" id="foot32"></a>32. : It is admitted, even in the case of
+      <i>Bacteria</i>, whose movements are the most uniform, that they are
+      sometimes so inert and languid as to show no movements at all; while, at
+      other times, they exhibit mere Brownian movements or those no more nearly
+      allied to "life" than the minute particles of carbon escaping from the
+      flame of a kerosene lamp. And among the most distinguished microscopists,
+      it is a question whether these infusorial forms, those exhibiting the most
+      active oscillations, are really vegetal or animal in origin; in other
+      words, whether they are <i>Fungus-spores</i> or <i>Torula</i>-cells, or
+      whether they may not be some intermediate forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot33" id="foot33"></a>33. : The difficulty of assigning any
+      definitional value to a "primordial germ" is due to the vagueness of idea
+      attached to it in the popular mind, as well as to the diversified theories
+      and speculations of the scientists concerning the origin of life. We can
+      only define it as a "vital unit," as the chemist defines his smallest
+      conceivable quantity--his "primary least"--of an element, as a "chemical
+      unit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot34" id="foot34"></a>34. : Let two comrades be shot at the
+      same instant in battle, the one through the heart, and the other through
+      the arm, shattering it badly. What is there to prevent the surgeon from
+      taking a piece of bone out of the arm of the man shot through the heart
+      and instantly killed, and using it to make good the arm of the man still
+      living? Apparently nothing but that the dead man's bone will not knit. He
+      may not have been dead five minutes, and Professor Beale's bioplasts might
+      still be at work spinning matter and weaving tissue for the integrity of
+      the displaced bone. Why will it not knit? Simply because the vital
+      principle that differentiates matter is gone--can no longer act. If the
+      integrity of the bone depended on the action of the molecules, and not on
+      the vital principle, there is no reason why this experiment should not be
+      a success. For the molecules are all there, and their action will not be
+      disturbed for hours after the death of the man shot through the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot35" id="foot35"></a>35. : It is safe to adhere to the
+      Leibnitzian axiom, <i>Natura non agit saltatim</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot36" id="foot36"></a>36. : One of the most cultured classes of
+      Christian believers in our day, holds that "all life is from the Lord;"
+      that "He is the fountain, and we only the streams thence." And this, they
+      claim, is true of all life. To "take away our breath," therefore, is to
+      cut off this stream perpetually flowing from its invisible source--the
+      fountain of all Life. When scientific methods substitute for a first cause
+      a mere resultant effect, all primary principles disappear in their
+      intermediates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot37" id="foot37"></a>37. : Professor Marsh, of Yale College,
+      has predicted that the "missing link" will be found in Borneo--evidently
+      not crediting Mr. Stanley's statement about its presence in the interior
+      of Africa. But one "missing link" is hardly enough; there ought to be an
+      extensive family of them to complete Mr. Darwin's plexus. From the lowest
+      genetic form to the anthropoid ape is a distance which does not half cover
+      the length of this plexus--the immense gap between the monkey and the man
+      being decidedly the greater length of chain. And yet the first half of the
+      chain is traversed by innumerable forms--millions of links, so to speak.
+      How, then, is the greater length of the plexus to be covered by a single
+      "missing link?" A long line of caudal ancestry must be dug up, therefore,
+      in Borneo, and shipped to the Peabody Museum, before this tremendous
+      stretch in the chain of animated nature is satisfactorily accounted for.
+      Borneo must be exceedingly rich in osteologic remains, even to bridge the
+      chasm between its own ourang-outangs and the Dyaks, or aboriginal
+      inhabitants, of that island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="foot38" id="foot38"></a>38. : This daring hypothesis of the
+      materialists is so utterly repugnant to all our ideas of a perfected
+      Cosmos, that we have no patience with those advancing it. It is, at best,
+      speculation run mad, and is based on no other assumption than that of the
+      inherent imperfectibility of the universe as it came from the hand of God,
+      or from the dynamic play of molecules extending throughout vast geognostic
+      epochs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a materialistic stand-point this assumption of imperfectibility
+      inevitably runs into the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. For if, in the play
+      of the material forces of the universe, an infinite duration of past time
+      has effected nothing but mutually disturbing and re-adjusting movements
+      and relations among cosmical bodies, then an infinite duration of time to
+      come can effect nothing but similarly mutual adjustments and
+      re-adjustments in respect to such bodies. With an infinity of time, space,
+      matter and motion, everywhere presenting a unity of phenomena in the
+      universe, "there can never be anything," according to the great Stagirite,
+      "unconnected or out of place, as in a bad tragedy." Conservation must,
+      therefore, be the rule, and desinence the impossible exception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these adherents of inherent imperfectibility instance the fact of
+      vanished and variable stars, as well as those that have suddenly appeared,
+      and, after brief periods of intense brilliancy, as suddenly disappeared,
+      to show that there are mighty disturbances in the sidereal heavens which
+      entirely negative the idea of "conservation" as a geognostic law. But the
+      phenomena of variable stars, with all their apparent irregularity of
+      motion and fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite
+      and well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of
+      extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of Tycho
+      Brahe. Where there is one self-luminious body (or sun) in the
+      interstellary spaces, there are probably not less than forty non-luminous
+      or dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective centres of light
+      and heat, as the attending planets revolve about the common centre of
+      gravity in our own system. And this is especially true of that vast and
+      fathomless star-stratum, called the Milky-way, in which most of these
+      peculiar phenomena occur, with the exception of the variable stars only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That stars should vary in their intensity of light by the probable
+      transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no matter of
+      wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising that these
+      sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater frequency. This would
+      inevitably be the case if the planes of revolution, in the case of these
+      non-luminous bodies about their central orbs, were coincident with the
+      lines of vision from our own planet--a circumstance by no means improbable
+      from the vastness of the sidereal heavens and the innumerable hosts of
+      stars marching therein. Besides, these periodical variations may be
+      accounted for in part--especially in the case of double stars--from their
+      apparent rather than real change of place in the heavens. For if our
+      sun-system is travelling towards a point in the constellation Hercules at
+      the rate of 194 thousand miles an hour (the rapidity of Arcturus' flight),
+      it is impossible to determine, in the present state of astronomical
+      knowledge, whether the apparent change of place in any star is real or
+      merely optical. But, in the case of double stars, each is travelling
+      (independently of its other motions) about the common centre of gravity
+      obtaining in its own system, and these relative movements may account for
+      the greater or less intensity of light as the two stars, viewed as one,
+      present a greater or less area of luminosity in their united surfaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assumed revolution of one of these stars about the other--thus
+      destroying all the known analogies of the universe, as exemplified in our
+      own system--may be accounted for in the same way. With stupendous
+      planetary systems revolving about each of these apparently double stars,
+      they must respectively have a revolution, real as well as apparent, about
+      their own centres of gravity--not one and the same centre, but different
+      and far distant centres. Lying in nearly the same line of vision, with
+      planes of movement at right angles with it, they would necessarily present
+      the appearance of one star revolving about the other--an <i>apparent</i>
+      motion only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the writer here ventures an explanation of the phenomena of <i>temporary</i>
+      stars, or those making their appearance in the heavens, flaming up into
+      stars of the first, second and third magnitudes, and then disappearing
+      altogether. The most remarkable of these stars, or <i>apparent</i> stars,
+      was that of Tycho Brahe in 1572, presenting its maximum brilliancy at the
+      very first, but gradually diminishing in size until the end of seventeen
+      months, when it disappeared, without change of place, from the heavens.
+      This temporary star was visible in Cassiopeia, on the verge of the
+      Milky-way, within whose swarm of stellar worlds most of these apparent
+      stars have made their appearance. Tycho Brahe, in seeking to account for
+      this stellar phenomenon, advanced the theory that stars might be "formed
+      and molded out of cosmical vapor," or "vapory celestial matter," as the
+      elder Herschel put it, "which becomes luminous as it condenses
+      (conglomerates) into fixed stars." But any such rapid condensation of
+      "vapory matter," in the light of Laplace's "nebular theory," is manifestly
+      too absurd for scientific recognition. A more satisfactory explanation may
+      be here suggested:--Supposing the apparent relative position of any six or
+      seven stars of the sixth magnitude in the Milky-way, should be so changed
+      by the combined motions of our sun-system and of the stars themselves, as
+      to throw them into one and the same line of vision, but so clustered
+      together as to show their several star-discs as one, we should
+      unquestionably have a star of the first magnitude, which would continue as
+      long as this extraordinary stellar conjunction should last. As one after
+      another of these stars should fall out of line, by reason of the combined
+      motions named, the apparent star would be diminished from the first to the
+      second magnitude, and so on until it reached the sixth magnitude, when it
+      would pass beyond the reach of unaided human vision. But as the star of
+      Tycho Brahe suddenly appeared at its fullest brilliancy, it may be
+      objected that this suggested theory fails to meet the required conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As 18,000,000, out of the 20,000,000, of telescopic stars lie in the
+      Milky-way, it is not by any means improbable that such a conjunction of
+      stars may occur therein as often at least as once or twice in a century.
+      We certainly see brilliant patches of closely-crowded stars, in great
+      numbers, in this galactic zone, and the fact that these temporary stars
+      almost uniformly appear in that zone renders the suggestion here made
+      quite as rational, in the way of speculation at least, as that of "vapory
+      celestial matter" suddenly condensed into a star of the first magnitude,
+      as Sir. William Herschel would have us believe was possible, if not
+      probable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, it is a definitely ascertained fact that such clusters of stars,
+      lying in almost the same line of vision, exist in various parts of the
+      heavens, which present to the naked eye the appearance of a star of the
+      fourth or fifth magnitude, and probably would, if more thickly clustered,
+      present that of a star of the first magnitude. But powerful telescopes
+      resolve them into a large number of stars, from the thirteenth to the
+      fifteenth magnitude. One such cluster in Andromeda's girdle has been
+      resolved into not less than fifteen hundred small stars of very low
+      magnitude, and pretty widely scattered in the telescopic field. Alexander
+      Von Humboldt, in speaking of stars that have thus disappeared, says that
+      "their disappearance may be the result of their motion as much as of any
+      diminution of their photometric processes (whether on their surfaces or in
+      their photospheres), as would render the waves of light too weak too
+      excite the organs of sight." And he adds: "What we no longer see is not
+      necessarily annihilation," repeating at the same time the question of
+      Pliny--"<i>Stell&aelig; an obirent nascerenturve?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But another, and (to our mind) more satisfactory, explanation of these
+      stellar phenomena, may be hazarded in this connection: There are, for
+      instance, in the Milky-way, among the more brilliant clusters of stars,
+      dark granular spots, of greater or less magnitude, in which the most
+      powerful telescopes show no glints or traces of stars. They are among
+      Humboldt's smaller "fissures or chasms in the heavens," in which he
+      asserts that there is a great paucity of stars, or none at all. Now, if
+      one of these thick stellar clusters, which show to the naked eye as a
+      single star, should, by the combined cosmical movements of our sun-system
+      and the stellar group in question, pass into the field of one of these
+      small rents or "fissures" in the galactic curtain--that lying in front of
+      the stellar cluster--it would immediately show as a star of possibly the
+      first magnitude, and would continue to shine as a star of that magnitude
+      so long as it remained in the field of the narrow rent or fissure. It
+      would shine out suddenly like a star through a rift in the clouds of a
+      dark night, and disappear as soon as it had traversed, or apparently
+      traversed, the rift in question. This galactic curtain, it should be borne
+      in mind, is made up of 18,000,000 of stars, or sun-systems, and not less
+      than 720,000,000 dark cosmical bodies revolving about their respective
+      centres of gravity. If the "nebular theory" of the universe be true, this
+      is unquestionably the exact condition of things in the Milky-way. Of the
+      more distant stars in this crowded galaxy, we can only catch, even in the
+      telescopic field, mere glints of light as the intervening swarms of
+      stellar and planetary worlds thicken in the foreground and shut out the
+      more distant view. It is only through these rents and fissures in this
+      great galactic curtain that the brighter stellar clusters beyond can ever
+      be seen; and these glints of far distant light, showing dimly through this
+      curtain, may account for the peculiar <i>milky</i> appearance of the
+      galaxy, arising from the loss of chromatic power in the full beams
+      themselves. It was undoubtedly through one of these rents in the galactic
+      curtain that the condensed starry cluster of Tycho Brahe suddenly made its
+      appearance in the outer fringes of the Milky-way, and remained visible for
+      a period of seventeen months.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>