to confine the
number of his creative fiats to a few, or to one, nor which would limit
the fiats to one time." (Fairhurst, _"Organic Evolution Considered."_)

Biological Barriers.

The atom, the molecule, the life-germ,--these are the barriers which
stand against the evolutionistic conception of origins on the physical
side. We proceed to investigate the points at which _biology_ touches
our problem, and again three barriers call for notice and investigation:
The difference between plants and animals; the difference between
vertebrates and invertebrates; and the difference between mammals and
all other vertebrates.

1. _Whence the animal kingdom?_ This stage in the scale of life, the
advance from vegetable to the animal kingdom, is, to quote Mr. Wallace,
again "completely beyond all possibility of explanation by _matter,_ its
laws and forces. It is the introduction of _sensation or consciousness,_
constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and
vegetable kingdoms." Plants live, animals live _and feel;_ and they have
consciousness. At this point again, only a thorough-going materialist
will deny the working of an outside power, a power not resident in
matter, but altering and molding matter from without and endowing it
with new abilities. Only an act of this Power Without could endow living
substance with feeling and consciousness. No one can here any longer
appeal to that undefined chemico-electric action by which some attempt
to account for protoplasm. Mr. Wallace says: "Here all idea of mere
complication of structure producing the result is out of the question.
We feel it to be altogether preposterous to assume that at a certain
stage of complexity of atomic constitution, and as a necessary result of
that complexity alone, an _ego_ should start into existence,--a thing
that _feels,_ that is _conscious_ of its own existence. Here we have the
certainty that something new has arisen,--a being whose nascent
consciousness has gone on increasing in power and definiteness till it
has culminated in the higher animals. No verbal explanation or attempt
at explanation--such as the statement that life is 'the result of the
molecular forces of the protoplasm,' or that the whole existing organic
universe from the amoeba up to man was latent in the fire-mist from
which the solar system was developed--can afford any mental satisfaction,
or help us in any way to a solution of the mystery."

2. _Whence the backbone?