"'So careful of the type?' but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go.
'Thou makest thine appeal to me; I bring to life, I bring to death: The spirit does but mean thy breath: I know no more.' And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law-- Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust Or seal'd within the iron hills?" --_In Memoriam._
"Until Christ be formed in you."--_Paul._
"The one end to which, in all living beings, the formative impulse is tending--the one scheme which the Archaeus of the old speculators strives to carry out, seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the parent. It is the first great law of reproduction, that the offspring tends to resemble its parent or parents more closely than anything else."--_Huxley._
If a botanist be asked the difference between an oak, a palm-tree and a lichen, he will declare that they are separated from one another by the broadest line known to classification. Without taking into account the outward differences of size and form, the variety of flower and fruit, the peculiarities of leaf and branch, he sees even in their general architecture types of structure as distinct as Norman, Gothic and Egyptian. But if the first young germs of these three plants are placed before him and he is called upon to define the difference, he finds it impossible. He cannot even say which is which. Examined under the highest powers of the microscope they yield no clue. Analyzed by the chemist with all the appliances of his laboratory they keep their secret.
The same experiment can be tried with the embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the worm, the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let the most skilled observer apply the most searching tests to distinguish one from the other and he will fail. But there is something more surprising still. Compare next the two sets of germs, the vegetable and the animal. And there is still no shade of difference. Oak and palm, worm and man all start in life together. No matter into what strangely different forms they may afterward develop, no matter whether they are to live on sea or land, creep or fly, swim or walk, think or vegetate, in the embryo as it first meets the eye of Science they are indistinguishable. The apple which fell in Newton's garden, Newton's dog Diamond, and Newton himself, began life at the same point.[85]
If we analyze this material point at which all life starts, we shall find it to consist of a clear structureless jelly-like substance resembling albumen or white of egg. It is made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Its name is protoplasm. And it is not only the structural unit with which all living bodies start in life, but with which they are subsequently built up. "Protoplasm," says Huxley, "simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the Potter." "Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus."[86]