Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/52

 Evolution in general. More complex or heterogeneous aggregates are so made to arise, one out of another; as through Evolution in general. A geometrically increasing multitude of these larger and more complex aggregates so produced, at the same time results; as through Evolution in general. And it is by the action of the successively higher forms on one another, joined with the action of environing conditions, that the highest forms are reached; as through Evolution in general. * * * the early world, as in the modern laboratory, inferior types of organic substance, by their mutual action under fit conditions, evolved the superior types of organic substances, ending in organizable protoplasm. And it can hardly be doubted that the shaping of organizable protoplasm, which is a substance modifiable in multitudinous ways with extreme facility, went on after the same manner. * * * Protein is capable of existing under probably at least a thousand isomeric forms, and is capable of forming, with itself and other elements, substances yet more intricate in composition that are practically infinite in their variety and kind. Exposed to those innumerable modifications of conditions which the earth's surface afforded, here in amount of light, there in amount of heat and elsewhere