TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION.

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of organs work to a common end with infallible accuracy and harmony.

When each form reaches maturity, and the full development and power it was designed to receive within and without is gained, a part of its energies are employed in the work of preparing for a successor, or a multitude of successors, of its own form and kind-the germ of a new individual which shall reach the same development and possess the same qualities is produced. Thus the life and qualities of the first of each race are transmitted, and the origin of all the future individuals of its kind, however numerous or long continued the race may be, is provided for.

A small range of variation between the parent and the descendant is often seen, and a change in outward circumstances has been found to increase variation largely. Transmission of qualities and form is governed by definite laws, and, by observing these, important changes have been brought about by man in the management of the products of plants and trees, and in similar ways desirable qualities of domestic animals. have been improved. Careful and careless cultivation make wide differences in the quality of farm and garden produce, while an intelligent attention to parentage may cause a great gain in the value of domestic animals; but the difference has never been known to be so great or fundamental as to originate in this way a wholly new animal or plant.

Variation is observed to accumulate, however, in long periods of time, and it is believed by many that in the long duration of plant and animal existence it may account for all the different varieties that have ever been known-that they all had their remote origin in one primal being. A study of life through all time shows that the most perfect animals and plants are to be found now, and that they constantly descend in the scale as the observer traces them back toward their beginning. According to this theory the life force in the first animals was feeble and indeterminate; it grew stronger

and more definite as the circumstances became more favorable. The variations that founded all the different classes arose in the long periods of time seeming to be required for geological changes; so that the whole vast number of species and their surprisingly different forms and qualities are so many branches growing from one original stock.

This is rather a theory, striving to account for the succession of life on the earth, for the resemblances, diversities and gradual progress of its forms toward the ideal animal-man than a proved scientific truth. The first forms of life may have been, and probably were, too slight in structure to be preserved in the early rocks, which were subjected to great changes by heat and chemical agents; there are various leaves gone from the volume of nature—at least they seem not to have been found, or, if found, have not been properly interpreted-and observation has not yet been able to trace the steps of the great transformations, if they really occurred, with the clearness and certainty that would amount to proof.

If the origin, relationships and progress of life are not to be accounted for in this way, how, then, are they to be explained? It has been usual, until recently, to consider that each distinct species of plants and animals was specially created by the intelligent Power from whose hand all things originally came, and that each was introduced when the circumstances were suitable. This, also, is without positive proof in the records. of the earth itself. There is a class of rocks below which no trace of them has been found; they made their first appearance in small numbers, increasing in the later rocks, showing more perfect development, or, at least, more numerous and perfect species, until they disappeared or reached their present condition. How they came the rocks do not explain, and it seems as great an exertion of power to confer on the Life Force this wonderful gift of adaptation and variation, of changing its mode of structure in such astonishing ways and bestowing such an extraordinary diversity of capabilities and

CREATION AND EVOLUTION.

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qualities on its different products, as to introduce them by direct creation.

Many experiments and careful studies have been made to ascertain if nature now contains within itself a power of spontaneous generation-of producing a germ without the aid of parents-but no such instance has been discovered; no hint has been given that nature ever possessed such a power, unless the fact of the appearance of new species and races may be so considered. On the contrary, early races

are often found to combine in their forms and qualities the peculiarities of two or more races that afterward made their appearance, suggesting the idea that they may have been the original stock from which distinct branches grew. A large number of similar facts seem to give countenance to the doctrine of evolution, or the gradual development of different species and classes from those that preceded them.

There is certainly a law of evolution-an unfolding of many parts having close relationship to one stock or rootbut it does not seem capable of explaining all the facts observed. The sudden appearance of classes widely different from any that had before been found is frequently noticed, for which evolution has no well-proved explanation; and a variety of similar facts seems to indicate the operation, occasionally at least, of some other law regulating the introduction and propagation of forms of life.

The most interesting question of all relates to Man as an animal and as an all-comprehending intelligence. In the general features of his bodily structure he is closely related to the higher animals, while in his mental and spiritual powers there is a world-wide difference. In one view he seems to be the climax of animal development; in another, he has a kind of faculties with a compass and power absolutely unparalleled in creation as we know it.

Physically, he stands as the ultimate end, the most perfect, the most beautiful and noble of all the products of the Life

Force. He is the finest sample of its architectural skill, and is endowed with a variety and breadth of sweep of physical capabilities and adaptations that place him at the head of the Systems of Life. But, by his intelligence and moral qualities he seems to be the significance, the end and purpose of the system of nature as a whole. He can combine and control chemical and mechanical powers so as to become superior in strength to all other forces of the organic world united. He is, therefore, King in the earth. He may penetrate the thought of which each part of nature is the embodiment, so that all nature is as a book made for his reading and instruction; and still above this quality is his range of moral powers; of distinguishing between right and wrong; of admiring purity and moral beauty, and of practicing virtue. These capacities of control, of reflection, of combinations whose results often resemble creation; his power of living in the past and the future by a well-trained imagination, render him immeasura bly superior to every other animal.

How did he become so like and so unlike all the other products of the Life Force? It is the most interesting and the most difficult question which the consideration of the system of life suggests, and finds, as yet, no satisfactory answer in the researches of science. It is the last and deepest secret of the systems of nature and of life, and the key to them both. Science has demonstrated, very clearly, that definite purposes and ends unite all the stages in the development of animate and inanimate nature. Man was evidently designed to be the interpreter of the whole, to conquer all its secrets. They will be delivered to him in due time. The separate volumes are being carefully and successfully studied, and all the relations of one to the other will ultimately be apparent. Nature, with all its various parts and purposes, is evidently one and tends to one great end, which seems to be secured in the qualities, the powers and the destinies of its last and greatest production. Man can never rest until all the meaning which its various developments contain stands clearly revealed.

THE LIFE FORCE IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS.

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Though the Life Force seems to be a common principle in all the forms it organizes, and to follow the same methods so far as the objects it seeks permit, its manifestations in the different spheres of its activity are extremely different. There seems little in common between the tree, the fish, the horse and man; and yet there is a strong likeness in the first operations of the building force to which they all owe their existence; and there are points of contact in the great classes where it seems difficult to distinguish them from each other. It is difficult to tell that the lowest animals are not plants, and the least developed men seem to be only superior animals. They seem, in some respects, to be parts of one system of life; but the most characteristic examples of development in each place a world-wide difference between the classes.

The plant commences with a cell, or a collection of cells, and builds down into the dark and damp earth and up in the sunlight. It uses the earth as its support and both earth and air are its magazines of raw material, while, by its foliage, it expels some gases and takes in others-the light assisting in its work. In the animal the building force commences with a center and works each way toward the extremities-in the lowest animals not distinguishing a head at all, but spending more and more elaborate pains on that part as the animal rises in rank.

The higher plants are firmly fixed in the earth, have no power of movement and no self-consciousness. All but the lowest animals are free to move, have sensation, consciousness, and a certain power of will in the control of their motions; these gifts becoming more complete in the higher animals until they find a kind of boundless development in man.

The plant finds its nourishment without and near it and draws it in by attraction through its pores; the animal goes about for its food which it takes into a central cavity where it is digested and from which it is distributed through the system as needed.