BIOLOGY REFORMED. II 
logical development, or Phylogeny, dependent on the laws 
of Inheritance and Adaptation. 
As I shall have, later, to explain this most interesting and 
important coincidence more fully, I shall not dwell further 
upon it here, and merely call attention to the fact that it 
can only be explained and its causes understood by the 
Theory of Descent, while without that theory it remains 
completely incomprehensible and inexplicable. The Theory 
of Descent in the same way shows us why individual animals 
and plants must develop at all, and why they do not come 
into life at once in a perfect and developed state. No super- 
natural history of creation can in any way explain to us 
the great mystery of organic development. To this most 
weighty question, as well as to all other biological ques- 
tions, the Theory of Descent gives us perfectly satisfactory 
answers—and always answers which refer to purely me- 
chanical causes, and point to purely physico-chemical forces 
as the causes of phenomena which we were formerly accus- . 
tomed to ascribe to the direct action of supernatural, 
creative forces. Hence, by our theory the mystic veil of 
the miraculous and supernatural, which has hitherto been 
allowed to hide the complicated phenomena of this branch 
of natural knowledge, is removed. All the departments of 
Botany and Zoology, and especially the most important por- 
tion of the latter, Anthropology, become reasonable. The 
dimming mirage of mythological fiction can no longer 
exist in the clear sunlight of scientific knowledge. 
Of special interest among general biological phenomena 
are those which are quite irreconcilable with the usual 
supposition, that every organism is the product of a creative 
power, acting for a definite object. Nothing in this respect 
