atural Law, thus assigning but one class of causes for everything
revealed to our sensual observation? Or are we at once to reject this
idea, and remain content either to suppose that creative power here
acted in a different way, or to believe, unexaminingly, that the inquiry
is one beyond our powers?"[40] In reply to these questions, he proceeds
to show that "there is a balance of probability from actual evidence in
favor of _an organic creation by law_," and that "in tracing the actual
history of organic beings upon the earth," as revealed by Geology, we
find that "these came not at once, as they might have been expected to
do if produced by some special act, or even some special interposition
of will, on the part of the Deity; they came in a long-continued
succession, in the order, as we shall afterwards see more convincingly,
of progressive organization, grade following grade, till, from an humble
starting-point in both kingdoms, the highest forms were realized." Such
is his general principle; and, without entering into the details, we may
sum up his general argument by saying, in the words of another,[41]
that, according to his theory, "dulse and hen-ware became, through a
very wonderful metamorphosis, cabbage and spinach; that kelp-weed and
tangle bourgeoned into oaks and willows; and that slack, rope-weed, and
green-raw, shot up into mangel-wurzel, rye-grass, and clover." So much
for the FLORA; and now for the _Fauna_, and the transition from the one
to the other. His views are thus exhibited by Sir David Brewster: "The
electric spark, escaping from the wild elements around it, struck life
into an elementary and reproductive germ, and sea-plants, the food of
animals, first decked the rude pavement of the ocean. The lichen and the
moss reared their tiny fronds on the first rocks that emerged from the
deep; land-plants, evolving the various forms of fruit and flower, next
arose,--the Upas and the bread-fruit tree, the gnarled oak and the lofty
cedar. Animal life appeared when the granary of nature was ready with
its supplies. A globule, having a new globule forming within itself,
which is the fundamental form of organic being, may be produced in
albumen by electricity; and as such globules may be identical with
living and reproductive cells, we have the earliest germ of organic
life, the first cause of all the species of animated nature which people
the earth, the ocean, and the air. Born of electricity and albumen, t