22 THE HISTOEY OF CREATION. 



creative power be worshipped as a personal god, or whether 

 it be termed the power of life (vis vitalis), or final cause 

 (causa finalis). In any case, to express it in one word, its 

 supporters have recourse to a miracle for an explanation. 

 They throw themselves into the arms of a poetic faith, 

 which as such can have no value in the domain of scientific 

 knowledge. 



All that was done before Darwin, to establish a natural 

 mechanical conception of the origin of animals and plants, 

 has been in vain, and until his time no theory gained a 

 general recognition. Darwin's theory first succeeded in 

 doino: this, and thus has rendered an immense service. For 

 the idea of the unity of organic and inorganic nature 

 is now firmly established; and that branch of natural 

 science which had longest and most obstinately opposed 

 mechanical conception and explanation, viz. the science of 

 the structure of animate forms, is launched on to identically 

 the same road towards perfection as that along which all the 

 rest of the natural sciences are travelling. The unity of all 

 natural phenomena is by Darwin's theory finally established. 



This unity of all nature, the animating of all matter, the 

 inseparability of mental power and corporeal substance, 

 Goethe has asserted in the words : " Matter can never exist 

 and be active without mind, nor can mind without matter." 

 These first principles of the mechanical conception of the 

 universe have been taught by the great monistic philosophers 

 of all ages. Even Democritus of Abdera, the immortal 

 founder of the Atomic theory, clearly expressed them about 

 500 years before Christ; but the great Dominican friar, 

 Giordano Bruno, did so even more explicitly. For this he 

 was burnt at the stake, by the Christian inquisition in 



