SCIENCE AND FAITH. 9 
the existing quantity of matter in the universe as a given 
fact. If any person feels the necessity of conceiving the 
coming into existence of this matter as the work of a super- 
natural creative power, of the creative force of something 
outside of matter, we have nothing to say against it. But 
we must remark, that thereby not even the smallest advan- 
tage is gained for a scientific knowledge of nature. Such a 
conception of an immaterial force, which at the first creates 
matter, is an article of faith which has nothing whatever 
to do with human science. Where faith commences, science 
ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly 
kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the 
poetic imagination ; knowledge, on the other hand, originates 
in the reasoning intelligence of man. Science has to pluck 
the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned 
whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imagin- 
ings of faith or not. 
If, therefore, science makes the “history of creation” its 
highest, most difficult, and most comprehensive problem, it 
must accept as its idea of creation the second explanation 
of the word, viz. the coming into being of the form of 
natural bodies. In this way geology, which tries to in- 
vestigate the origin of the inorganic surface of the earth as 
it now appears, and the manifold historical changes in the 
form of the solid crust of the earth, may be called the 
history of the creation of the earth. In like manner, the 
history of the development of animals and plants, which 
investigates the origin of living forms, and the manifold 
historical changes in animal and vegetable forms, may be 
termed the history of the creation of organisms. As, how- 
ever, in the idea of creation, although used in this sense, the 
