THE SPECIAL-CREATION-HYPOTHESIS. 421 



the aggregate of complex tissues and organs? Surely thus 

 to assume a myriad supernatural impulses, differing in their 

 directions and amounts, given to as many different atoms, is 

 a multiplication of mysteries rather than the solution of a 

 mystery. For every one of these impulses, not being the 

 result of a force locally existing in some other form, implies 

 the creation of force; and the creation of force is just as 

 inconceivable as the creation of matter. It is thus with 

 all attempted ways of representing the process. The old 

 Hebrew idea that God takes clay and moulds a new creature, 

 as a potter moulds a vessel, is probably too grossly an- 

 thropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of the 

 special-creation doctrine. But having abandoned this crude 

 belief, what belief is he prepared to substitute? If a new 

 organism is not thus produced, then in whaf way is one 

 produced? or rather — in what way does he conceive a new 

 organism to be produced? We will not ask for the ascer- 

 tained mode, but will be content with a mode which can be 

 consistently imagined. No such mode, however, is assign- 

 able. Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of 

 organism results from a divine interposition, do so because 

 they refrain from translating words into thoughts. They do 

 not really believe, but rather believe they believe. For belief, 

 properly so called, implies a mental representation of the 

 thing believed, and no such mental representation is here 

 possible. 



§ 113. If we imagine mankind to be contemplated by 

 some being as short-lived as an ephemeron, but possessing 

 intelligence like our own — if we imagine such a being study- 

 ing men and women, during his few hours of life, and 

 speculating as to the mode in which they came into existence ; 

 it is manifest that, reasoning in the usual way, he would 

 suppose each man and woman to have been separately 

 created. No appreciable changes of structure occurring in 

 any of them during the time over which his observa- 



