374 GEOLOGICAL BIOLOGY. 



inorganic matter directly, as one might build up a vessel of 

 clay and then vivify it. The new conception of God as creator 

 finds its concrete, empirical representation in the act of ex- 

 pressing a thought or purpose into the spoken word. Creation 

 is the phenomenalizing of will, so sublimely described in that 

 ancient formula, /;/ tJie beginning God spoke and it (the whole 

 phenomenal universe) became. 



The origin of the universe is thus the becoming phe- 

 nomenal of an eternal purpose ; the only alternative is to 

 deny all origin, and to assume that the phenomenal universe 

 itself is eternal. 



Evolution the Mode of Creation of Organic Beings. — And, as 

 we have seen, the great distinction between organic and in- 

 organic matter consists in the evolving of the organic characters 

 in an appreciable and often very slow course of time ; whereas 

 the qualities of inorganic matter were originally committed to 

 the particular matter, which has continued to exist from the 

 beginning without change. 



The slowness and continuity of the process of organic evo- 

 lution is thus an evidence of the continual presence of crea- 

 tive energy in the world, and the permanence of qualities of 

 inorganic matter is evidence of the ultimate distinctness be- 

 tween the created and the Creator. The human mind is 

 utterly incapable of accounting for intrinsic differences in the 

 universe except by conceiving of some mode of their origina- 

 tion, and we have not explained their origin by simply saying 

 that they have evolved. 



Tlie change which the speculations of the last fifty years 

 have wrought in the notion of creation has been a most im- 

 portant and radical one. There has been substituted for the 

 old idea of an artificer constructing a machine out of materials, 

 with the addition of his making his own materials out of 

 nothing, the higher conception of the transformation of a 

 conscious purpose into physical action — the visible expression 

 of invisible will. 



The Properties of Matter Coexistent with it, and either Eternal 

 or Created. — The new notion of creation does not include the 

 idea of the making of something out of nothing, but it does 

 mean that what has existed already in one state of being; 



