purpose, it is absorbed into
the rest of the jelly, and has now to do the duty of a stomach by
helping to wrap up what it has just purveyed. The small round
jelly-speck spreads itself out and envelops its food, so that the whole
creature is now a stomach, and nothing but a stomach. Having digested
its food, it again becomes a jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn
part of itself into hand or foot as its next convenience may dictate. It
is not to be believed that such a creature as this, which is probably
just sensitive to light and nothing more, should be able to form a
conception of an eye and set itself to work to grow one, any more than
it is believable that he who first observed the magnifying power of a
dew drop, or even he who first constructed a rude lens, should have had
any idea in his mind of Lord Rosse's telescope with all its parts and
appliances. Nothing could be well conceived more foreign to experience
and common sense. Animals and plants have travelled to their present
forms as man has travelled to any one of his own most complicated
inventions. Slowly, step by step, through many blunders and mischances
which have worked together for good to those that have persevered in
elasticity. They have travelled as man has travelled, with but little
perception of a want till there was also some perception of a power, and
with but little perception of a power till there was a dim sense of
want; want stimulating power, and power stimulating want; and both so
based upon each other that no one can say which is the true foundation,
but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in
mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need,
and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little
into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too
far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far blindfolded
that they could see but for a few steps in front of them, yet so far
free to see that those steps were taken with aim and definitely, and not
in the dark.

"Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, "plus il a pu, mais aussi
moins il a fait, moins il a su." This holds good wherever life holds
good. Wherever there is life there is a moral government of rewards and
punishments understood by the amoeba neither better nor worse than by
man. The history of organic development is the history of a moral
struggle.

We know nothing as yet about t