Contributions to the theory of natural selection. A series of essays ... By Alfred Russel Wallace ...

.YO0TES. 372A
which I believe has acted in the case of man, and they were
purposely chosen to show, that I reject the hypothesis of
"first causes" for any and every special effect in the universe, except in the same sense that. the action of man or
of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using
such terms I wished to show plainly, that I contemplated
the possibility that the development of the essentially human
portions of man's structure and intellect may have been
determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and universal laws.
A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation,
but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature,
incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and arguments of
an exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a
sufficiently powerful intellect to deduce, from the existence
on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic animals, the
presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than
themselves.
A~TOTE B. (Pacge 365.)
A friend has suggested that I have not here explained
myself sufficiently, and objects, that life does not exist in
matter any more than consciousness, and if the one can be
produced by the laws of matter, why may not the other? I
reply, that there is a radical difference between the two.
Organic or vegetative life consists essentially in chemical
transformations and molecular motions, occurring under
certain conditions and in a certain order. The matter, and
the forces which act upon it, are for the most part known;
and if there are any forces engaged in the manifestation of vegetative life yet undiscovered (which is a moot
question), we can conceive them as analogous to such forces
as heat, electricity, or chemical affinity, with which we are
already acquainted. We can thus clearly conceive of the
transition from dead matter to living matter. A complex
mass which suffers decomposition or decay is dead, but if
this mass has the power of attracting to itself, from the
surrounding medium, matter like that of which it is composed, we have the first rudiment of vegetative life. If the