Animals that never walk have abortive legs hidden
under their skin, useless now but indicating what was useful once. Our
knowledge no doubt in this as in any other province of nature is but the
merest fraction of what may be known therein. But there is no evidence
whatever to show that what we have observed is not a fair sample of the
whole. And so taking it, we find that the mass of evidence in favour of
the evolution of plants and animals is enormously great and increasing
daily.
Granting then the high probability of the two theories of Evolution,
that which begins with Laplace and explains the way in which the earth
was fitted to be the habitation of living creatures, and that which owes
its name to Darwin and gives an account of the formation of the living
creatures now existing, we have to see what limitations and
modifications are necessarily attached to our complete acceptance of
both.
First, then, at the very meeting point of these two evolutions we have
the important fact that all the evidence that we possess up to the
present day negatives the opinion that life is a mere evolution from
inorganic matter. We know perfectly well the constituents of all living
substances. We know that the fundamental material of all plants and all
animals is a compound called protoplasm, or that, in other words,
organic matter in all its immense variety of forms is nothing but
protoplasm variously modified.
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