vegetative and vital processes generally, of the very simplest and
lowliest life forms, are as much directed and controlled by immutable
laws as the most complex and elevated.

The life cycles, accurately known, of monads repeat themselves as
accurately as those of rotifers or planarians.

And of course, on the very surface of the matter, the question
presents itself to the biologist why it should not be so. The
irrefragable philosophy of modern biology is that the most complex
forms of living creatures have derived their splendid complexity and
adaptations from the slow and majestically progressive variation and
survival from the simpler and the simplest forms. If, then, the
simplest forms of the present and the past were not governed by
accurate and unchanging laws of life, how did the rigid certainties
that manifestly and admittedly govern the more complex and the most
complex come into play?

If our modern philosophy of biology be, as we know it is, true, then
it must be very strong evidence indeed that would lead us to conclude
that the laws seen to be universal break down and cease accurately to
operate where the objects become microscopic, and our knowledge of
them is by no means full, exhaustive, and clear.

Moreover, looked at in the abstract, it is a little difficult to
conceive why there should be more uncertainty about the life processes
of a group of lowly living things than there should be about the
behavior, in reaction, of a given group of molecules.

The triumph of modern knowledge is the certainty, which nothing can