DISCUSSION 205 



tarily: "Whence does this highly developed 

 being suddenly come ? " He must as such 

 consist of an organic mass, composed of cells. 

 But, to quote Virchow's saying, with which you 

 probably concur, omnis cellula ex cellula, it is 

 obvious that this being must have been evolved 

 from some primitive cell. The assumption that 

 the first being was a simple mass like a cell, is 

 far more likely to be correct, and is more simple 

 than your assumption that there was in the 

 beginning a highly organised Creator. 



' Hoping for a speedy answer, I am, etc.' 

 It is true that if we regard the personal 

 Creator, the ens a se of Christianity, in this way, 

 then Dr. Plotz's question: 'Who created the 

 Creator ? ' is as apt as the question : ' Who laid 

 the egg from which the Creator was hatched ? ' 

 It is a lamentable characteristic of our age, 

 that Haeckel's influence on philosophy has 

 reduced men, even among the educated classes, 

 to have recourse to such expedients. And our 

 nation was once the nation of thinkers ! 



I need scarcely say that these remarks do 

 not apply to Dr. Thesing, but were evoked by 

 his question regarding the nature of God. 



Dr. Thesing went on to say that a subject must 

 have an object, and the conception of the person 

 imagining a thing presupposed immediately that 

 which he imagined. What else could this thing 



