It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth, as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat, and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible, vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds, quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we have named.
This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on "conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates," "_molecules organiques_," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what "molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection with matter--_molar_ motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass, and _molecular_ motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.