Wherever there is life there is a moral government of rewards and
punishments understood by the amoeba neither better nor worse than by
man. The history of organic development is the history of a moral
struggle.
As for the origin of a creature able to feel want and power and as to
what want and power spring from, we know nothing as yet, nor does it seem
worth while to go into this question until an understanding has been come
to as to whether the interaction of want and power in some low form or
forms of life which could assimilate matter, reproduce themselves, vary
their actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not suffice to
explain the development of the varied organs and desires which we see in
the higher vertebrates and man. When this question has been settled,
then it will be time to push our inquiries farther back.
But given such a low form of life as here postulated, and there is no
force in Paley's pretended objection to the Darwinism of his time.
"Give our philosopher," he says, "appetencies; give him a portion of
living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work
upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of
propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is
to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and
animal productions which we now see in it.
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