INTRODUCTORY 13 



or vital force. They see a purpose and design in nature 

 which seems to prove to them conclusively that it is 

 guided by intelligence, and sometimes it is used to prove 

 God's existence in the universe or a Divine Will or the 

 will of some other intelligent force in the universe. The 

 other side attempts to explain the growth and develop- 

 ment in life from chemical, mechanical and natural forces. 

 Now whatever you wish to call it, not one can deny that 

 whoever the being is who is able to effect the construc- 

 tion of such stationary structures as trees and plants and 

 movable objects as animals, must be possessed of a very 

 high degree of intelligence. They are structures that 

 present themselves to us with all the characteristics of a 

 work of art. It stands practically admitted, that the cell 

 is able to produce all these structures, partly of himself 

 and partly from the crude elements of earth, air and 

 water. We will see later when we get to it that he 

 gathers the materials with which he is able to effect these 

 constructions in the same manner as we do. That in 

 order to be able to manufacture the different materials 

 that are needed to do this, he takes advantage of heat, 

 light, electricity and chemical actions in exactly the same 

 manner that we do except, of course, on a much smaller 

 scale. You know that so far we have not been able to 

 find anything in crude matter and the blind forces of 

 nature indicating any intelligence. Nothing is found 

 indicating any power to produce a work of art. It has 

 now been conclusively shown that the cell is not a simple 

 organism but a very highly organized animal or being, 

 which is made up of still smaller beings. For convenience 

 in the discussion of this question, we shall call this being 

 the primordial cell. It begins to look as if these prim- 

 ordial cells or beings of which the cell is composed are of 

 that microscopic size that they may be able to handle 



