True, it would be hard to place one's self on the same
moral platform as a stone, but this is not necessary; it is enough that
we should feel the stone to have a moral platform of its own, though that
platform embraces little more than a profound respect for the laws of
gravitation, chemical affinity, &c. As for the difficulty of conceiving
a body as living that has not got a reproductive system--we should
remember that neuter insects are living but are believed to have no
reproductive system. Again, we should bear in mind that mere
assimilation involves all the essentials of reproduction, and that both
air and water possess this power in a very high degree. The essence of a
reproductive system, then, is found low down in the scheme of nature.
At present our leading men of science are in this difficulty; on the one
hand their experiments and their theories alike teach them that
spontaneous generation ought not to be accepted; on the other, they must
have an origin for the life of the living forms, which, by their own
theory, have been evolved, and they can at present get this origin in no
other way than by _Deus ex machina_ method, which they reject as
unproved, or spontaneous generation of living from non-living matter,
which is no less foreign to their experience. As a general rule, they
prefer the latter alternative.
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