16 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



its truth. According to both forms of the hypothesis, 

 though there is independent geologic evidence to the 

 same effect, our globe existed as a molten sphere before 

 it cooled down to a solid one. With this fiery-fluid 

 condition of things, the existence of all life such as we 

 know it was wholly incompatible.* Life was impos- 

 sible on the earth till, after the lapse of ages, its surface 

 had become sufficiently cooled. And then we are pre- 

 sented with the same question with respect to the origin 

 of life that was before raised with respect to the origin 

 of the earth itself. If life has not been from eternity 

 and it evidently has not been whence came its first 

 forms ? Now, if we dismiss the strange fancy of Sir W. 

 Thomson, that the first forms of life were transported 

 from some other planet to the earth upon an aerolite 

 a theory moreover, which would only push back the 

 mystery one step, without solving it there are only two 

 other possible answers to the question of the origin of 

 life. Either life was created supernaturally from nothing, 

 or from nothing by us conceivable, by the fiat of the 

 Creator, as we read in the Mosaic and Miltonic account ; 

 or life was spontaneously evolved by Nature herself 

 from the primitive physical atoms, according to natural 

 process, by chemical and physical laws. The first, it is 

 contended by scientific thinkers, is no answer, since the 

 word " creation " conveys, when closely pressed, no mean- 

 ing, and the creative fiat is a wholly inconceivable cause 

 a notion which Science and Philosophy agree in de- 

 claring to be unthinkable, and the attempt to realize 



* There are, indeed, those who think that life may have existed in 

 some form " as an eternal constituent of the universe." And Haeckel 

 has hazarded the notion that " all matter is, in a certain sense, alive." 

 Bnt no life such as we know it could have existed in the first fiery- 

 fluid condition of our globe as Science represents it ; and if matter be 

 alive, it must be in a sense wholly inconceivable to us. 



