74 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



conflagration, or of a railway accident, as of the creation of 

 man." (Jenaische Zestscrift, bd. v. p. 272.) 



In the face, then, of these hypotheses of creation, which 

 are scientifically insufficient, we are forced to seek refuge in 

 the counter-theory of development of organisms, if we wish 

 to come to a rational conception of the origin of organ- 

 isms. We are forced and obliged to do so, even if the theory 

 of development only throws a glimmer of probability 

 upon a mechanical, natural origin of the animal and vege- 

 table species; but all the more if, as we shall see, this 

 theory explains all facts simply and clearly, as well as com- 

 pletely and comprehensively. The theories of develop- 

 ment are by no means, as they often falsely are represented 

 to be, arbitrary fancies, or wilful products of the imagination, 

 which only attempt approximately to explain the origin of . 

 this or that individual organism; but they are theories 

 founded strictly on science, which explain in the simplest 

 manner, from a fijced and clear point of view, the whole of 

 organic natural phenomena, and more especially the origin 

 of organic species, and demonstrate them to be the necessary 

 consequences of mechanical processes in nature. 



As I have already shown in the second chapter, all 

 these theories of development coincide naturally with that 

 general theory of the universe which is usually designated 

 as the uniform or monistic, often also as the mechanical or 

 causal, because it only assumes mechanical causes, or causes 

 working by necessity (causae efficientes), for the explanation 

 of natural phenomena. In like manner, on the other hand, 

 the supernatural hypotheses of creation which we have al- 

 ready discussed coincide completely with the opposite view 

 of the universe, which in contrast to the former is called the 



