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8 THE WORLD OF LIFE CHAP.
dogmatism of combined negation and omniscience, and more
especially when this assumption of superior knowledge seems
to be put forward to conceal his real ignorance of the nature
of life itself. He evades altogether any attempt to solve
the various difficult problems of nutrition, assimilation, and
growth, some of which, in the case of birds and insects, I
shall endeavour to set forth as clearly as possible in the
present volume. As Professor Weismann well puts it, the
causes and mechanism by which it comes about that the
infinitely varied materials of which organisms are built up
" are always in the right place, and develop into cells at the
right time," are never touched upon in the various theories
of heredity that have been put forward, and least of all in
that of Haeckel, who comes before us with what he claims
to be a solution of the Riddle of the Universe.
Huxley on the Nature and Origin of Life
Although our greatest philosophical biologist, the late
Professor T. H. Huxley, opposed the theory of a " vital
force " as strongly as Haeckel himself, I am inclined to think
that he did so because it is a mere verbal explanation
instead of being a fundamental one. It conceals our real
ignorance under a special term. In his Introduction to the
Classification of Animals (1869), in his account of the
Rhizopoda (the group including
the Amoebae and Foramini-
fera), he says :
"Nor is there any group in the animal kingdom which more
admirably illustrates a very well-founded doctrine, and one which
was often advocated by John Hunter, that life
is the cause and not
the consequence of organisation ; for in these lowest forms of animal
life there is absolutely nothing worthy of the name of organisation
to be discovered by the microscopist, though assisted by the
beautiful instruments that are now constructed. ... It is structure-
less and organless, and without definitely formed parts. Yet it
possesses all the essential properties and characters of vitality. Nay,
more, it can produce a shell ; a structure, in many cases, of extra-
ordinary complexity and most singular beauty.
"
That this particle of jelly is capable of guiding physical forces in
such a manner as to give rise to those exquisite and almost mathematically-arranged
structures being itself structureless and without
permanent distinction or separation of parts is to my mind a fact
of the profoundest significance " (p. i o).