to transmit them as a permanent, unimprovable legacy to their descendants. He who is capable of believing that primordial germs, without the superintendence of Infinite Intelligence, have evolved all animals from the moneron to Archbishop Butler, ought to maintain logical consistency by asserting that these primitive germs originated by evolution from inorganic matter. He should make his theory sufficiently extensive to sweep the universe. He ought to conceive that space, impelled by some energy evolved from nothingness, originated an atom of matter, which, being infinitely divisible, diffused itself throughout immensity, filling its fields with an attenuated ether; that this, impressed with forces, commenced to concentrate, dropping at successive intervals matter sufficient to form nebulæ; that the matter, thus sloughed off from the periphery of the revolving mass to form solar systems, continued the process of concentration, throwing off at convenient distances, the material that was to form worlds, the residuum remaining as a central sun which lighted and governed its material children; that the matter left to form each world continued to concentrate, and after throwing off moon-material condensed into gas, water, earth, rock; that some earth-atom evolved itself into a lichen, thus originating life, which under the manipulations of evolution has covered continents with vegetable forms, and peopled earth, air, and water with swarming millions of living

creatures.

If we are to adopt a theory of evolution which shall dispense with the necessity of an intelligent First Cause, why not indulge in speculations fitted to foster the hope of reaching realms where reason no longer fetters the imagination?

Another objection to the acceptance of the theory

that all living creatures have a common parentage in a few primordial germs, is the time required for the transformations. These must have required, it is affirmed, at least four hundred millions of years, if not, indeed, twice or thrice that period. But unfortunately, there is no evidence that the earth was fitted to sustain life in eras so remote. Confessedly, a measure of heat sufficiently intense to fuse metals is incompatible with any form of life known to us; and according to the careful computation of Sir William Thompson, this planet was a molten mass four hundred million years ago, if not as recently as half that period; and has not been sufficiently cool to admit life for more, at longest, than one hundred million years. This, however, is pronounced too brief for the changes that have occurred. The formation of animals, to say nothing of the formation of plants in an antecedent era, demands, on the hypothesis that they have been evolved from a few primordial germs, a more protracted period. The transmutations of species, implied in the theory, could not have been effected, we are repeatedly assured, in less than four hundred million years, if indeed in a period so circumscribed. In that remote era, ere radiation had lowered the temperature of the solar system, the earth and the sun must have been in a gaseous state, unless the cooling process has been progressing more rapidly in the last few thousand years than in antecedent periods. That this has not been the case may be argued from the uniformity of nature's laws. If the heat of the earth and of the sun was not uniformly more intense through each past millenium some reason should be assigned for the belief that it may not have been. Were these primordial germs evolving new species during the gaseous period? No; for it is conceded that life could not have been in existence on the earth during this state. Conse

quently, it is incumbent to prove, either that these transformations could have occurred in a briefer period, or that the Uniformitarian Theory of nature is a delusion.

By way of rebuttal to the above line of reasoning, it may perhaps be said that there is no satisfactory evidence that the solar system has been undergoing a process of cooling; that there is no such thing as absolute waste in the universe, that consequently heat which has passed from the sun is not wasted, but necessarily exists somewhere, since it cannot become a nonentity, nor remain in vacuo or in empty space, that accordingly there is as much heat in the universe, and probably as much in the solar system, as there ever was; that inasmuch as heat is absorbed sunlight and has no existence till light becomes imprisoned in matter,-it is more consonant with reason to believe that the heat of the solar system has been substantially the same in amount since the period when planets came into existence.

Possibly this may be true, perhaps is as near the truth as the conjecture that the solar system is continuously losing heat, and has been during the period of its existence. This, it is true, would dispose of Mr. Thomson's argument to the effect that the earth has not been in a condition to support life for more than a hundred thousand years; but it is equally destructive to the theory, maintained by nearly all evolutionists, that the matter which now constitutes the solar system was once in a molten state, and antecedently in a gaseous condition. Consequently, they must either surrender the hypothesis that the planets are an evolution from pre-existing nebulæ, or they must admit that the earth has not been in a condition to sustain life for the period of time which they assert is necessary to account for the transmutations which have occurred in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

Either material evolution did not occur under the operation of heat, or the world has not been in a condition to sustain life for the protracted period which the theory of transmutation demands.

Prof. Huxley at one time announced his belief that bathybius, a gelatinous substance found in the bed of the ocean, was the progenitor of all living creatures. Strass affirmed, "Huxley has discovered bathybius, a shining heap of jelly on the sea-bottom. By this the chasm may be said to be bridged and the transition effected from the inorganic to the organic." The existence of bathybius rendered it impossible, in his judgment, for a reasonable man to retain faith in Scripture. Alas, the fruitlessness of human speculation! The insecurity of pinning faith to the dictum of an erring mortal! Bathybius, on careful investigation, turned out to be sulphate of lime. Prof. Huxley publicly repudiated his child. Poor bathybius, named so grandly, honored so greatly, praised so unstintingly, has been laid to rest. Though his brief life was an imposing pageant, his birth, it seems, was a blunder, his old age a burden to his friends, his death the removal of embarrassment, and his burial a relief.

Mr. Darwin's statement, so far as it may be understood as conjecturing that possibly there may have been but one primordial germ, will come under review in the succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

HAECKEL'S PATER FAMILIAS, THE MONERON.

PROFESSOR HAECKEL of the university of Jena, though defending evolution with as much pertinacity as Mr. Darwin, nevertheless differs from him in reference to the origin of life, asserting that the moneron, "the lowest of living beings," originated in spontaneous generation from inorganic matter. To appearances, he agrees with Lamark, who, although he knew nothing of natural selection, originated the theory of the transmutation of species, and firmly believed that there was no essential difference between animate and inanimate nature, the causes which transform the one being the same as those which transform the other-agencies which may be designated under a natural, uninterrupted, necessary evolution.

These monera, spontaneously evolved from inorgana, Haeckel regards as "the primeval parents of all other organisms." He defines the little miracle-workers as follows:

"Monera. . . are not only the simplest of all observed organisms, but even the simplest of all imaginable organisms. . . . All trace of organization—all distinction of heterogeneous parts-is still wanting in them. . . . The whole body of these most simple of all organisms-a semi-fluid, formless, and simple lump of albumen-consists in fact of a single chemical combination. . . . Monera. . . are organisms not in any way built up of distinct organs, but consist solely of a single chemical combination, and yet grow, nourish, and propagate themselves. We have the simplest of all species of organisms in