420 THE EVOLUTION OP LIFE. 



as being a primitive belief and as being a belief belonging 

 an almost-extinct family, is a belief not countenanced by 

 single fact. No one ever saw a special creation; no 01 

 ever found proof of an indirect kind that a special creatic 

 had taken place. It is significant, as Dr. Hooker remark 

 that naturalists who suppose new species to be miraculous 

 originated, habitually suppose the origination to occur i 

 some region remote from human observation. Wherever tl 

 order of organic nature is exposed to the view of zoologis 

 and botanists, it expels this conception; and the conceptic 

 survives only in connexion with imagined places, where tl 

 order of organic nature is unknown. 



Besides being absolutely without evidence to give it exte 

 nal support, this hypothesis of special creations cannot su; 

 port itself internally cannot be framed into a cohere] 

 thought. It is one of those illegitimate symbolic conce 

 tions which are mistaken for legitimate symbolic conce 

 tions (First Principles, 9), because they remain unteste 

 Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea in 

 anything like a definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-ide 

 admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a ne 

 organism, when specially created, is created out of nothing 

 If so, there is a supposed creation of matter; and the ere 

 tion of matter is inconceivable implies the establishment < 

 a relation in thought between nothing and something- 

 relation of which one term is absent an impossible rel 

 tion. Is it supposed that the matter of which the new o 

 ganism consists is not created for the occasion, but is take 

 out of its pre-existing forms and arranged into a new forn: 

 If so, we are met by the question how is the re-arrangemei 

 effected? Of the myriad atoms going to the composition < 

 the new organism, all of them previously dispersed throu^ 

 the neighbouring air and earth, does each, suddenly disci 

 gaging itself from its combinations, rush to meet the res 

 unite with them into the appropriate chemical compound 

 and then fall with certain others into its appointed place i 



