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world proceeds from its natural cause, according to natural 
laws, and therefore nothing can here be brought in of the in- 
tervention of an active purpose bearing upon this fixed result, 
distinct from natural necessity. Yet we cannot consider these 
natural causes as barely mechanical ; for their effects reach, far 
beyond that which can be explained by motion in space, or re- 
solved into such motion. And if from these same causes along 
with inorganic nature, life also, and along with irrational life 
also conscious and rational existence have appeared, not as it 
were by mere accident in course of time, but necessarily by 
virtue of their natures, do proceed and ever have proceeded ; 
if the world never can have been without life and intelligence, 
since the same causes which now produce life and reason must 
already from eternity have worked, and therefore have pro- 
duced these continually, so must we call the world, as a whole, 
in spite of the natural necessity which rules in it, indeed, 
rather on account of this, at the same time the work of abso- 
lute Reason. That this Reason should have been guided in its 
action by proposed ends, is indeed not necessary 
“Yet, inasmuch as it is one and the same cause from which 
in the last analysis all effects spring, inasmuch as all the laws 
of Nature only show the art and manner in which these causes, 
following the necessity of their existence, work toward many 
sides, so from the totality of these operations must neces- 
sarily proceed a world harmonious in all its parts, a world 
complete in its way, and arranged with absolute conformity 
to purpose.”* 
A point of still higher moment to the argument Zeller has 
quite overlooked, viz., that in no case could the mechanical 
theory be adequate to the solution of the universe. Motion, 
indeed, might account for all the phenonena of physics, with 
the exception of motion itself. But, after all the facts of 
mechanism are disposed of, there remain the facts and forces 
of vitalism, which refuse to be included under mechanism. 
Motion cannot originate life, neither can chemistry create or 
evolve life. We may analyze life into all its constituents and 
conditions, but cannot detect the life itself. We may combine 
all the constituents and conditions of life, but cannot produce 
life. The living organism we know, but the mind demands 
the cause of life-organization, and sees that this does not 
* It is a groundless assumption of Zeller that because life is it has always 
been ; an assumption not warranted by the law of scientific induction. The 
rule of experience by which physicists would bind us forbids such a gene- 
ralization upon phenomena of which there is no possible record. This is not 
scientific testimony, but speculative hypothesis. 
