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by a pervasive life and directed to common

ends, ends the more various, complex, and special, in proportion to the rank of the organism in the scale of being. So, too, the component cells become effete and die, while the aggregate life continues; and the continued structure, which is nothing but an aggregate, is somehow informed, animated, and operated by a common life of higher grade than that of any or all its components.

In numerous lower plants and animals we cannot definitely determine what are organisms and what are organs; in the herb or tree, and in the coral polypidom, organ, individual, colony are inextricably blended; in the higher animals subordination of parts to a whole is completely attained. All along the ascent that which controls and subordinates parts aggrandizes its manifestations. The lowest animals add very little to merely vegetative life, except greater sensitiveness to external impressions and more free and varied response; a step higher brings in a greater range of unconscious feeling; the higher brute animals have attained unto specific desires, affections, imagination, and the elements of simple thought; the highest, gifted with reflective reason, may make their own thoughts the

subject of thought. So, our conception of individuality is from ourselves, conscious beings: it is carried down unqualified to the brute animals with which we are associated; it becomes vague and shadowy in plants, but still, somehow, the idea inheres throughout all organisms. The beginning of organization is individuation or tendency to individualize. completed self is man.

The

Here let me interject a remark in correction of a common misapprehension as regards the nature of the simplicity of the lowest organisms. An animalcule and a unicellular plant, or the cellular components of common plants or animals, are simple indeed, comparatively. But the recent science which has brought out the close connection of the lower with the higher forms (and showed that through all "one increasing purpose runs") is also showing, in all the latest microscopic work, that the plant-cell and the animalcell are really very complex structures, and the processes through which one cell becomes two, instead of being a simple bisection, prove to be very elaborate and wonderful. The further the investigation is carried under the modern microscope, the more complex and recondite does

their structure and behavior appear to be. They seemed to be simple because they are small; but much of the simplicity vanishes upon intimate acquaintance. Wherefore, in view of recent discoveries of this sort, it is premature to conclude that the "little lumps of protoplasm" described by Hæckel are really destitute of organic structure. It is an illusion to fancy that the mystery of life is less in an amœba or a blood-corpuscle than in a man.

From individuals in themselves, let us pass to questions relating to their succession and kinds.

Plants and animals, each propagating their kind, produce lines of individuals, sustaining to each other the relation of parent and progeny. These lines are the species of the naturalist. Have the species come down from the begin ning of life, unaltered or altered; or have there been successive creations?

Taking first the vegetable and animal kingdoms as a whole, it has long been well understood that ages upon ages have passed since the earth was stocked with living beings of numerous sorts Kind after kind has appeared, flourished, and disappeared; and, in the long succession, species of progressively higher rank have come

into existence, the forms more and more approximating those which now exist. There is good reason to believe that at more than one epoch the earth has been as fully stocked with species as it is now, and in equal diversity, except as to the highest types. What relation have these beings of the earlier and of the succeeding times sustained to each other and to the present inhabitants of the earth?

Half a century ago, when I began to read scientific books and journals, the commonly received doctrine was, that the earth had been completely depopulated and repopulated over and over, each time with a distinct population; and that the species which now, along with man, occupy the present surface of the earth, belong to an ultimate and independent creation, having an ideal but no genealogical connection with those that preceded. This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz, who maintained it with all his great ability, as long as it was tenable. I am not aware that it now has scienany tific upholder. It is certain that there has been no absolute severance of the present from the nearer past; for while some species have taken

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