Page:Evolution and Natural Selection in the Light of the New Church.djvu/7

Rh always remain such, the vegetable never developing into the animal, or the animal into the vegetable. Doubtless it is difficult to discover the exact difference between vegetable and animal protoplasm (or bioplasm). It is also difficult in the lowest forms of life to discern between vegetable and animal organisms; and even the animal consciousness which is called instinct is, in some cases, scarcely distinguishable from the unconscious vitality of the vegetable. But, admitting this difficulty, it only shows our want of further knowledge; and there is no reliable scientiﬁc evidence whatever that vegetable forms ever were or can be developed into animal forms, or vice versâ, merely by a varied arrangement or combination of their component inorganic elements. This, together with the entire absence of scientiﬁc evidence that any vegetable or animal species ever developed into a distinctly higher species, are powerful arguments in favor of the doctrine that each distinct species, from lowest to highest, had a distinct spiritual origin. It is true that chemical and microscopical analyses demonstrate that similar