existing world, have also certain elements,
even the whole basis and condition of their existence, in common with that
which was already before in existence; the planet has its elements in
common with the elements of other planets, the organic has the same
material substances as the inorganic, man has {257} the elements and the
organization of his body as well as a great part of his psychical activity
in common with animals. Nothing urges us to suppose--and the analogy of all
that we know even forbids us to suppose--that with the appearance of a new
species of beings, the same matter and the same quality of matter which the
last appearance has in common with the already existing, has each time been
called anew into existence out of nothing. Only that which in the new
species is really new, comes into existence anew with its first appearance.
But we do not even know whether the proximate cause of this new does really
come into existence for the first time, or whether it was not before in
existence in a real, perhaps latent, condition, and is now set free for the
first time. In the one case as in the other, we shall call the new, which
comes into existence, a new creation. And if man thinks that the new only
deserves the name of creation, when it occurs suddenly and at once, where
before only other things were present, like a _deus ex machina_, certainly
such an opinion is only a childlike conception, which becomes childish as
soon as we scientifically reason about the process. It cannot be doubtful
that religious minds which are not accustomed to scientific reasoning, have
such a conception; whether theologians also favor it, we do not know,
although it is possible. Certainly those scientists who intend to attack
the faith in a living Creator and Lord of the world, take it as the wholly
natural, even as the only possible, conception of a Creator and his
creation; and of course it is to them a great and cheap pleasure to become
victorious knights in such a puppet-show view of the conception of
creation. But the source whence Christians derive their {258} religious
knowledge tells them precisely the contrary. The Holy Scripture, it is
true, sees in the entire universe a work of God. But where it describes the
creation of the single elements of the world, it describes at the same time
their creation as the product of natural causes, brought about by natural
conditions. The reader may see, for instance, the words: "And God said