"I judge of the order of the world, although I know not its end, because to judge of this order I only need mutually to compare the parts, to study their functions, their relations, and to remark their concert. I know not why the universe exists, but I do not desist from seeing how it is modified; I do not cease to see the intimate agreement by which the beings that compose it render a mutual help. I am like a man who should see for the first time an open watch, who should not cease to admire the workmanship of it, although he knows not the use of the machine, and had never seen dials. I do not know, he would say, what all this is for, but I see that each piece is made for the others; I admire the worker in the detail of his work, and I am very sure that all these wheelworks only go thus in concert for a common end which I cannot perceive."--_Rousseau._
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."--_Christ._
"In early attempts to arrange organic beings in some systematic manner, we see at first a guidance by conspicuous and simple characters, and a tendency toward arrangement in linear order. In successively later attempts, we see more regard paid to combinations of character which are essential but often inconspicuous; and a gradual abandonment of a linear arrangement."--_Herbert Spencer._
On one of the shelves in a certain museum lie two small boxes filled with earth. A low mountain in Arran has furnished the first; the contents of the second came from the Island of Barbadoes. When examined with a pocket lens, the Arran earth is found to be full of small objects, clear as crystal, fashioned by some mysterious geometry into forms of exquisite symmetry. The substance is silica, a natural glass; and the prevailing shape is a six-sided prism capped at either end by little pyramids modeled with consummate grace.
When the second specimen is examined, the revelation is, if possible, more surprising. Here, also, is a vast assemblage of small glassy or porcelaneous objects built up into curious forms. The material, chemically, remains the same, but the angles of pyramid and prism have given place to curved lines, so that the contour is entirely different. The appearance is that of a vast collection of microscopic urns, goblets, and vases, each richly ornamented with small sculptured discs or perforations which are disposed over the pure white surface in regular belts and rows. Each tiny urn is chiseled into the most faultless proportion, and the whole presents a vision of magic beauty.
Judged by the standard of their loveliness there is little to choose between these two sets of objects. Yet there is one cardinal difference between them. They belong to different worlds. The last belong to the living world, the former to the dead. The first are crystals, the last are shells.
No power on earth can make these little urns of the _Polycystina_ except Life. We can melt them down in the laboratory, but no ingenuity of chemistry can reproduce their sculptured forms. We are sure that Life has formed them, however, for tiny creatures allied to those which made the Barbadoes' earth are living still, fashioning their fairy palaces of flint in the same mysterious way. On the other hand, chemistry has no difficulty in making these crystals. We can melt down this Arran earth and reproduce the pyramids and prisms in endless numbers. Nay, if we do melt it down, we cannot help reproducing the pyramid and the prism. There is a six-sidedness, as it were, in the very nature of this substance which will infallibly manifest itself if the crystallizing substance only be allowed fair play. This six-sided tendency is its Law of Crystallization--a law of its nature which it cannot resist. But in the crystal there is nothing at all corresponding to Life. There is simply an inherent force which can be called into action at any moment, and which cannot be separated from the particles in which it resides. The crystal may be ground to pieces, but this force remains intact. And even after being reduced to powder, and running the gauntlet of every process in the chemical laboratory, the moment the substance is left to itself under possible conditions it will proceed to recrystallize anew. But if the Polycystine urn be broken, no inorganic agency can build it up again. So far as any inherent urn-building power, analogous to the crystalline force, is concerned, it might lie there in a shapeless mass forever. That which modeled it at first is gone from it. It was Vital; while the force which built the crystal was only Molecular.