Organisms and Their Origin 111 



"mechanical causality" and the like which we try 

 to force upon it. 



Our own mental experience, which we know 

 best, means continual change; from day to day we 

 ripe and ripe; we are continually recreating our- 

 selves, artists of our own life. So the organism 

 has true experience and history, which a stone 

 never has; there is persistence in spite of ceaseless 

 change; there is a continual registration of the re- 

 sults of time, and there is continual creation. The 

 organism's creativeness is incalculable, unpredict- 

 able; it uses time so as to profit by experience; it is 

 continually making itself afresh. In its essential 

 features it thus transcends mechanical description. 



Origin of Organisms upon the Earth. — No one 

 doubts that at some uncertain, but inconceivably 

 distant date, living creatures appeared upon the 

 earth, which had previously been tenantless. 

 During the early phases of the earth's history, 

 before it cooled and consolidated, the conditions 

 were quite impossible for such organisms as we 

 know, and there is no use talking about any other. 

 The question is: What was the manner of the be- 

 coming of living creatures upon the earth; and 

 the answer is that we do not know. Our inquiry 

 might close at this point, were it not that a num- 

 ber of less truthful answers have been given, were 

 it not that a discussion of the subject may enable 

 us to bring into greater prominence the essential 



