summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
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Title: Life: Its True Genesis

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</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>
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