THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 187 



of Life would not be a creation, nor a miracle, nor a phenome- 

 non pertaining to the supernatural order. 



The principle of the minimum forbids us to postulate the 

 superfluous, and a creative act would be superfluous in the 

 production of the first organisms. Inorganic nature contains 

 all the material elements found in living organisms, and all 

 organisms, in fact, derive their matter from the inorganic 

 world. If, therefore, they are thus dependent in their con- 

 tinuance upon a supply of matter administered by the inor- 

 ganic world, it is to be presumed that they were likewise de- 

 pendent on that source of matter in their first origin. In 

 other words, the material substrata of the first organisms were 

 not produced anew, but derived from the elements of the in- 

 organic world. Hence they were not created, but formed out 

 of preexistent matter. A creative act would involve total 

 production, and exclude the preexistence of the constituent ma- 

 terial under a different form. A formative act, on the con- 

 trary, is a partial production, which presupposes the material 

 out of which a given thing is to be made. Hence the Divine 

 act, whereby organic life was first educed from the passive po- 

 tentiality of inorganic matter, was formative and not creative. 

 Elements preexistent in the inorganic world were combined 

 and intrinsically modified by impressing upon them a new 

 specification, which raised them in the entitive and dynamic 

 scale, and integrated them into units capable of self-regula- 

 tion and reflexive action. This modification, however, was in- 

 trinsic to the matter involved and nothing was injected into 

 matter from without. Obviously, therefore, the production 

 of the first organisms was not a creation, but a formation. 



Still less was it a miracle; for a miracle is a visible inter- 

 position in the course of nature by a power superior to the 

 powers of nature. A given effect, therefore, is termed miracu- 

 lous with express reference to some existing natural agency, 

 whose efficacy it, in some way, exceeds. If there existed in 

 inorganic nature some natural process of self-vivification, 

 then any Divine interposition to produce life independently 



