20. : These transcendental or ideal forms may be said to correspond to the "spiritual essences" of Plato. They are the eternal, immutable principles which are discernible to the eye of the soul, as the sensible objects they represent are discernible to the eye of the body. Modern metaphysics may deem them mere abstractions, but a higher realistic philosophy will treat them as substantive forms, of which the objective reality is but the shadow.
21. : Herbert Spencer may be quoted as authority on this point. He says: "There is invariably, and necessarily, a conformity between the vital functions of any organism, and the conditions in which it is placed ... We find that every animal is limited to a certain range of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation." And the same law holds good as to the marine fauna and flora, each specific form being confined to its own sea-depth, or distance north or south from the thermal equator.
22. : Speaking of the ultimate principles or elements of matter, Plato is quoted by Humboldt as exclaiming with modest diffidence, "God alone, and those whom he loves among men, know what they are." It is only those who seek to eliminate God from the universe that speak with confident flippancy on the subject of molecular machinery and force-correlations.
23. : As long as the evolutionists cannot agree among themselves as to what constitutes the process of evolution, it can hardly be expected that the public will accept their speculations as conclusive inductions. Professor Bastian, who strongly commits himself to the doctrine, thinks the word "evolution" arbitrary and open to many objections, while Mr. Herbert Spencer says;--"The antithetical word Involution would much more truly express the nature of the process."
24. : "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" 1 Cor. 3. xvi.
25. : Dr. Drysdale, in his work on the "Protoplasmic Theory of Life," says: "Matter cannot change its state of motion or rest without the influence of some force from without. True spontaneity of movement is, therefore, just as impossible to it as to what we call dead matter.... So we are compelled to admit the existence of an exciting cause in the form of some force from without to give the initial impulse in all vital actions." In all life-manifestations, this "force from without," must be a pre-existing vital principle operating to effect the otherwise impossible change in matter.
26. : A favorite set-phrase of Professor Bastian in speaking of morphological cells or "units," as he sometimes calls them.
27. : That great and justly celebrated naturalist, Buffon, in speaking of the universal origination of the lower forms of animal life by a process termed, in his time, "spontaneous generation," says: "There are, perhaps, as many living things, both animal and vegetable, which are produced by the fortuitous aggregations of 'molécules organiques,' as there are others which reproduce themselves by a constant succession of generations." It is said that Buffon was for some time associated with the Abbé Needham in his experiments in vital directions, and was much influenced by them. So that it is by no means certain that he did not accept the Abbé's "force végétative" in place of his more materialistic views respecting "molécules organiques." At all events, his statement that as many living things appear in nature independently of reproducing causes as by successive generation, is no doubt true.
28. : M. Tréviranus, who followed Spallanzani and M. Bonnet in these flask experimentations, first noticed the important fact that the animalculæ appearing in different organic infusions, depended on the nature and quality of the infusions themselves, and that the changed conditions of the same infusion produced new and independent forms of life.
29. : Leibnitz, as quoted by M. Bonnet, says:--"Que l'Entendement Divin étoit la religion éternelle des Essences; parce que tout ce qui existe existoit comme de toute éternité comme possible ou en idée dans l'entendement de Dieu. J'exprimerai cette vérité sublime en d'autres termes: le plan entier d'univers existoit de toute Eternité dans l'entendement du Suprême Architecte. Tou tes les parties de l'univers et jusqu' an moindre atome étoient deffinés dans ce plan. Tous les changemens qui devoient survenir aux différentes pieces de ce Tout immense y avoient aussi leurs représentations. Chaque etre y étoit figuré par ses characteres propres: et l'acte par lequel la Souveraine Puissance a réalisé ce plan, est ce que nous nommons la Création."