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But, at the risk of being tedious, let us extend this argument of the materialists a little further: The only difference, they will still insist, between the preA"xisting germs of crystals and plants or the only difference essentially worth noticing is that crystalline particles of matter are endowed with much less potentiality of undergoing diversified forms and structural changes than the more highly favored vital particles, such as the proligerous pellicle, the bioplast, the plastide, etc.
We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent inductions: Cause must exist before effect. Without some vital principle, therefore, preA"xisting as a cause, there can be no life-manifestation.
A. R. Wallace's formula concerning the origin of species, that they "have come into existence coincident both in time and place with preA"xisting closely-allied species," may or may not be true so far as individual localization is concerned.
They all come, both the cells and shells, from the preA"xisting vital units, or determinate germs, that fall into their own incidences of movement, without any concurrence of physical conditions beyond their own inherent tendency to development. For "conditions" do not determine life; they only favor its manifestation.
In other words, if the animating principle of life or, as the Bible has it, the "animating soul of life" is not what manifests itself in material embodiment, but the reverse, what can Professor Haeckel mean by his new term "phylogeny," which ought to cover the lines of descent in all organic beings? Pabulum is nothing without a preA"xisting "something" to dispose of it.
Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree that in all life-manifestations there must be some preA"xisting vital force or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can come into existence. M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to physical or chemical forces."
The white clover and these nutritious grasses make their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation did on the earth, not from seed, but from preA"xisting vital units or primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the necessary conditions for their development and growth.
The true physiological formula is undoubtedly this: Trees make their appearance in climatic and other environing conditions, and flourish, without material change in characteristics, so long as these conditions favor. Why they make their appearance is not a debatable question, except as we assume a preA"xisting vital principle, and apply to its elucidation our subtlest dialectical methods.
It will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks. But how about the preA"xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene period?
But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized, whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency. Hence Life, either as a preA"xisting cause or vital agency, must precede both animal and vegetal organism. Again: Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that which is produced by an operating cause.
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