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Darwin's theory, there is a constant tendency to indefinite variation, and as the minute incipient variations will be in all directions, they must tend to neutralize each other, and at first to form such unstable modifications that it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how such indefinite oscillations of infinitesimal beginnings can ever build up a sufficiently appreciable resemblance to a leaf, bamboo, or other object, for "Natural Selection" to seize upon and perpetuate.
A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate.
There is an ingenious theory abroad, to the effect that every physical impulse, be it but a wave of a human hand, and that every intellectual impulse, whether it pass through the mind of a Newton or a brickmaker, goes, with whatever strength it may possess, into a common store of dynamic influences, and tells with some operative power, however imperceptible and infinitesimal, upon all subsequent events, great or small, so that everything tells on everything, and there is no one specific cause, primary or secondary, that can be assigned to any particular event.
In truth, whether the individual exists or no, the difference is so absolutely imperceptible in the whole of things that every complaint and every desire is ridiculous. Humanity in its entirety is but a flash in the duration of the planet, and the planet may return to the gaseous state without the sun's feeling it even for a second. The individual is the infinitesimal of nothing.
But whether moral or immoral the cosmic process, as measured by infinitesimal human emotion, one conviction remained with him that no logic could impair: the certainty that man should pursue the highest moral ideal with all his power to the unknown end, even though the suns in their courses should fight against him.
"If this were really so, one could mould the whole of humanity according to one type by giving people works to read of one tendency. A conception of life is only obtained from life itself, in its entirety, of which literature and human thought are but an infinitesimal part.
There was the black spot, a trifle larger now, and, forcing his nerves to be calm, he stared at it a long time, how long he never knew, but long enough for him to see it grow and take form and shape, for the infinitesimal but definite outline of mast, sails and hull to emerge, and then for a complete ship to be disclosed. The ship was coming toward the island. The increase in size told him that.
A body of schoolmasters inciting their pupils to infinitesimal peccadilloes with the object of provoking them to exclaim, 'Get thee behind me, Satan, or telling them white lies about history for the sake of being contradicted, insulted, and refuted, would certainly do less harm than our present educational allopaths do; but then nobody will advocate homeopathic education.
We possess a certain number of cases of kind, rigorously investigated, cases probably representing but an infinitesimal part of those which might be collected. Is it possible that they one and all elude the telepathic explanation? It would be necessary to make a study of them, conducted with the most scrupulous and unremitting attention; for the question is not devoid of interest.
The amiable intention of these gentry was to 'do me in, as they would have expressed it, and the vital question for me was, How did they mean to do it? Firearms they would probably avoid on account of the noise, but if they all came at me at once with knives my chance would be infinitesimal.