penetrate
the mysteries of creation." 11

Let us notice now the facts submitted to us. First, at the base of
the various departments of nature, we see a mass of apparently
lifeless matter. Out of this crude substratum of the outward world
we observe a vast variety of organized forms produced by a
variously named but unknown Power. They spring in regular methods,
in determinate shapes, exist on successive stages of rank, with
more or less striking demarcations of endowment, and finally fall
back again, as to their physical constituents, into the inorganic
stuff from which they grew. This mysterious organizing Power,
pushing its animate and builded receptacles up to the level of
vegetation, creates the world of plants.

"Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."

On the level of sensation, where the obscure rudiments of will,
understanding, and sentiment commence, this life giving Power
creates the world of animals. And so, on the still higher level of
reason and its concomitants, it creates the world of men. In a
word, the great general fact is that an unknown Power call it what
we may, Nature, Vital Force, or God creates, on the various planes
of its exercise, different families of organized beings. Secondly,
a more special fact is, that when we have overleaped the mystery
of a commencement, every being yields seed according to its kind,
wherefrom, when properly conditioned, its species is perpetuated.
How much, now, does this second fact imply? It is by adding to the
observed phenomena an indefensible hypothesis that the error of
traduction is obtained. We observe that human beings are begotten
by a deposit of germs through the generative process. To affirm
that these germs are transmitted down the generations from the
original progenitor of each race, in whom they all existed at
first, is an unwarranted assertion and involves absurdities. It is
refuted both by Geoffrey St. Hilaire's famous experiments on eggs,
and by the crossing of species.12 In opposition to this
theological figment, observation and science require the belief
that each being is endowed independently with a germ forming
power.

Organic life requires three things: a fruitful germ; a quickening
impulse; a nourishing medium. Science plainly shows us that this
primal nucleus is given, in the human species, by the union of the