SCIENCE AND FAITH. 9 



the existing quantity of matter in the universe as a given 

 fact. If any person feels the necessity of conceiving the 

 coming into existence of this matter as the work of a super- 

 natural creative power, of the creative force of something 

 outside of matter, we have nothing to say against it. But 

 we must remark, that thereby not even the smallest advan- 

 tage is gained for a scientific knowledge of nature. Such a 

 conception of an immaterial force, which at the first creates 

 matter, is an article of faith which has nothing whatever 

 to do with human science. Where faith com')nences, science 

 ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly 

 kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the 

 poetic imagination ; knowledge, on the other hand, originates 

 in the reasoning intelligence of man. Science has to pluck 

 the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned 

 whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imagin- 

 ings of faith or not. 



If, therefore, science makes the " history of creation " its 

 highest, most difficult, and most comprehensive problem, it 

 must accept as its idea of creation the second explanation 

 of the word, viz. the coming into being of the form of 

 natural bodies. In this way geology, which tries to in- 

 vestigate the origin of the inorganic surface of the earth as 

 it now appears, and the manifold historical changes in the 

 form of the solid crust of the earth, may be called the 

 history of the creation of the earth. In like manner, the 

 history of the development of animals and plants, which 

 investigates the origin of living forms, and the manifold 

 historical changes in animal and vegetable forms, may be 

 termed the history of the creation of organisms. As, how- 

 ever, in the idea of creation, although used in this sense, the 



