48 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
ship—we are forced to admit that they were created 
independently, and we must either suppose that every 
single organic individual was a special act of creation 
(to which surely no naturalist will agree), or we must 
derive all individuals of every species from a single in- 
dividual, or from a single pair, which did not arise in a 
natural manner, but was called into being by command of 
a Creator. In so doing, however, we turn aside from the 
safe domain of a rational knowledge of nature, and take 
refuge in the mythological belief in miracles, 
If, on the other hand, with Darwin, we refer the simi- 
larity of form of the different species to real blood-relation- 
ship, we must consider all the different species of animals 
and plants as the altered descendants of one or a few most 
simple original forms. Viewed in this way, the Natural 
System of organisms (that is, their tree-like and branching 
arrangement and division into classes, orders, families, 
genera, and species) acquires the significance of a real genea- 
logical tree, whose root is formed by those original archaic 
forms which have long since disappeared. But a truly 
natural and consistent view of organisms can assume no 
supernatural act of creation for even those simplest original 
forms, but only a coming into existence by spontaneous 
generation* (archigony, or generatio spontanea). From 
Darwin’s view of the nature of species, we arrive there- 
fore at a natural theory of development; but from Lin- 
nzeus’ conception of the idea of species, we must assume a 
supernatural dogma of creation. 
Most naturalists after Linnzeus, whose great services in 
* Archebiosis (Bastian), Abiogenesis (Huxley). 
