48 THE HISTORY OF CEEATION. 



ship — we are forced to admit that they were created 

 independently, and we must either suppose that every 

 single organic individual was a special act of creation 

 (to which surely no naturalist will agree), or we must 

 derive all individuals of every species from a single in- 

 dividual, or from a single pair, which did not arise in a 

 natural manner, but was called into being by command of 

 a Creator. In so doing, however, we tm^n aside from the 

 safe domain of a rational knowledge of nature, and take 

 refuge in the mythological behef in miracles. 



If, on the other hand, with Darwin, we refer the simi- 

 larity of form of the different species to real blood-relation- 

 ship, we must consider all the different species of animals 

 and plants as the altered descendants of one or a few most 

 simple original forms. Viewed in this way, the Natural 

 System of organisms (that is, their tree-like and branching 

 arrangement and division into classes, orders, families, 

 genera, and species) acquires the significance of a real genea- 

 logical tree, whose root is formed by those original archaic 

 forms which have long since disappeared. But a truly 

 natural and consistent view of organisms can assume no 

 supernatural act of creation for even those simplest original 

 forms, but only a coming into existence by 'spontaneous 

 generation* (archigony, or generatio spontanea). From 

 Darwin's view of the nature of species, we arrive there- 

 fore at a natural theory of development; but from Lin- 

 nseus' conception of the idea of species, we must assume a 

 supernatural dogma of creation. 



Most naturalists after Linnseus, whose great services in 



♦Archebiosis (Bastian), Abiogenesis (Huxley). 



