30 
and not before, life has departed from them, nor can matter 
detain life at its will ; therefore, ex nihilo nihil applies to the 
argument of matter evolving life ; — otherwise it has evoked a 
force it cannot control, for it has no more power to eject 
life than to preserve it. And as we cannot conceive such a 
thing as the maker subordinate to the made — inasmuch as the 
producer infers higher intelligence than the produced — does 
not this conflict with nature-creation of life ? as no one, I 
apprehend, can reasonably dispute the inferiority of the 
inorganic kingdom to the organic. Moreover, it is not denied 
that organisms are formed out of the material world. Vital 
power builds up matter into flesh and blood, and bone, and 
muscle, and hair, and feather, and fur, and scale, and every 
organism on the globe. Produce the agent, in matter, that 
can do this. No. Well, but you have as much right to 
assume that natural forces set up the living fabric, as I have 
to assume a vital power. I think not. Let us sit down to 
the microscope, and I show you the gradual development of 
forms where vitality is, with all the marvellous effects of its 
stimulus on the material body ; show me what we call natural 
forces, at the same work at which I show you vital power. 
You cannot ! have your natural forces the power to instruct 
me how the mechanism is calculated to perform, which I have 
shown you in operation ? No. Since, then, they cannot 
point to so much as one creative act — one smallest vestige 
of anything proceeding from their own volition — why do 
you call upon us to grant them the power to elaborate all 
the wonders and complexities of the living ? When you can 
place before us the most trivial self-advance in the inorganic, 
as under the microscope, I place before you the action of life 
on the most insignificant atom, our respective evidence may 
be taken to be on a par ; but until you can, there is eye- 
witness on my side, against assertion on yours. Which would 
the jury convict ? 
Again — where, in all nature, do we find the inferior pro- 
ducing the superior ? Where, in all creation, animate and 
inanimate, does the stone give us bread ? Can we point to 
one instance of the globe, with its rock and its soil, and 
its so-called imponderables, and the whole of its inorganic 
constituents, improving itself ? Can we find matter working ? 
— holding up before us independent power ? Can the skeleton 
of our planet unfold this to us ? Can the dry and the sapless 
clothe themselves with flesh and with leaf? Can we point 
to one single instance of even vegetable or animal rising above 
its original ? Until we can do this, is it not a little premature 
to credit that which has not life — and of whose improve- 
