d why, and especially how and why matter acts upon the
matter _in space_, physics can no longer tell us, but refers us to a
metaphysical cause.

This dependence of each single being, and of all its qualities and forces,
on a transcendental and {352} metaphysical cause of its existence, becomes
most clear to us in the world of the _organic_, and especially in the
transmission and development of organisms. _That_ individuals originate new
individuals of their species; _that_ the fecundated germs, if the necessary
conditions are present, develop themselves out of the first germ and
egg-cell in continually progressive and distinct differentiations, each
after its kind, into the full-grown condition, so that individuals endowed
with a soul and intellectual life are also developed out of such
beginnings;--these are facts which are continually repeated before our
eyes, and men of science have not yet reached the end in pursuing the
actual in these processes into its finest ramifications. But how it is that
individuals _must_ transmit themselves--that the seeds and eggs _must_ have
this force of germination and development--they have not yet been able to
explain, and will never be able to do so. The word "inheritance," which is
to solve the problem, is only a _name_ for the _fact_ which we observe, and
for the regularity of its repetition; but for this fact of inheritance
itself, we seek in vain a _physical_ explanation: we are referred to a
_metaphysical_ cause. Thus, not only the _first_ origin of life on earth is
an enigma to us (as we have seen in Part I, Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 3), but
organic life itself, in its whole existence and course, is a process which,
at every step, and in every place of its course, remains to us in its last
causes physically unexplained, and refers us to metaphysical causes.

If we finally see in all these inorganic and organic processes a striving
towards ends--and we must see it, as soon as we in general observe order,
the category of higher and lower, and the appearance of the higher on {353}
the basis of the lower--we are, with all our teleological observations,
again referred to the metaphysical, and still more decidedly to the
goal-setting metaphysical; and a metaphysical which sets and reaches goals
is nothing else than that in philosophic language which in the language of
religion we call a living _Creator_ and _Ruler of the world_ and the
activity of his _providence_.

From still anoth