in the quality of its aqueous medium, this extremely changeable substance must have undergone now one, now another of its countless metamorphoses. And to the mutual influence of its metamorphic forms under favoring conditions, we may ascribe the production of the still more composite, still more sensitive, still more variously changeable portions of organic matter, which in masses, more minute and simpler than existing Protozoa, displayed actions verging little by little into those called vital actions, which protein itself exhibits in a certain degree, and which the lowest known things exhibit only in a greater degree."[1]
We are impelled to ask a question that seems pertinent, suggested by the first lines of the paragraph. If organic life had no absolute commencement, how could organic matter be reached "through steps"? Would not the commencement of organic matter be also the commencement of organic life?
When the Evolutionist has thus accounted for the origin of the lower life-forms, it is easy to assume the formation of the higher by the continued action of the same laws producing modification of function through infinitesimal changes.
- ↑ Principles of Biology, pp. 482-484.
