tion that 'all individuals of the same species,
and all the closely allied species of most genera,' will hereafter be
discovered to 'have descended from one parent and to have migrated from
some one birthplace.' This, to my mind, is much more unlikely than his
further suggestion that 'all animals and plants are descended from some
one prototype.' Startling as this second proposition may be on first
hearing, it may not very improbably express the real fact, provided by
'some one prototype' be signified, not a single individual, but several
individuals of one and the same type. Beyond all doubt there was a time
when on and about our earth all matter was as yet inorganic, and when
whatever spirit,[38] of the sort so termed in contradistinction to
matter, either permeated the earth's substance or moved about its
surface, must have been as yet unembodied. Mr. Darwin demands whether
any one can 'really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's
history, elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into
living tissues.' I for one certainly am far from believing this. I see
no reason for believing that, whatever other phenomenon, at all similar,
may at any stage of the world's progress have occurred, it has at
innumerable subsequent stages been repeated; neither do I consider that
the phenomenon is likely to have worn the guise of a sudden flash. But I
do firmly believe, and am quite unable to substitute any equally
plausible substitute for the belief, that when the crust of the earth
had sufficiently cooled, and when other physical conditions had become
such as to admit of the manifestation of that life which we are
accustomed to distinguish by attaching to it the epithet 'organic,'
certain of those forces[39] which, in my opinion, constitute matter,
did, either of their own accord or under superior direction--not
suddenly flash, but--slowly elaborate themselves into organic structures
of some exceedingly simple type; that in the course of ages these simple
structures either developed themselves or were developed into structures
rendered by slow degrees more and more complex, until the degree of
complexity attained, being such as to fit them for being inhabited by
spirit previously unembodied, they were, by individualised portions of
such spirit, appropriated and inhabited accordingly. Beyond all doubt,
at some period or other, what had always previously been unorganised
matter must have become organised. Of two