BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS 131 



mark able things, as we shall yet learn in these 

 pages, but let us pause for a moment and 

 survey the edifice of assumption the erection of 

 which we have been watching. First of all we 

 have to assume the formation of the vaseline 

 with its powers of division; which perhaps we 

 may accept without any very great hesitation, 

 though there is no sort of evidence for the 

 division part of the theory. But suppose that 

 it did mechanically subdivide, where did it sud- 

 denly become endowed with heritable powers 

 powers mysterious beyond most of those with 

 which we are confronted in nature ? This is an 

 assumption which it is really impossible to 

 swallow, except on the theory that this was 

 the method adopted by the Creator the great 

 First Cause for the origination of life. The 

 fact is that as other and greater persons have 

 declared, such as Wallace when we arrive at 

 the origin of life, we arrive at a point so 

 momentous that we must seek for its explana- 

 tion outside the ordinary processes of nature. 

 Let us be clear on this matter as to which there 

 has been quite extraordinary misunderstanding. 

 Our view as to Creation is not the crude view 

 which some attribute to us in which as they Creation 

 put it the Creator is perpetually "interfering" 

 correcting as it were or revising His own 

 work. They might reasonably condemn as 



