2. Another of Mr. Spencer's naked assertions is that the belief in special creations is "not countenanced by a single fact." Not only did no man "ever see a special creation," but "no one ever found indirect proof of any kind that a special creation had taken place." In support of this sweeping dogma, he adduces a habit of the naturalists who maintain special creations to locate them in some region remote from human observation.[58] This is another instance of not stating the case of your adversary as strongly as you might state it, or as he states it himself. "While no naturalist and no other person who believes in special creations ever saw one take place, indirect and circumstantial evidence tending to show that the earth is full of them has been accumulated to an enormous amount." It is a monstrous extravagance to assert that the hypothesis is "absolutely without support of any kind." What if Mr. Spencer's opponents were to retort that no man ever saw an instance in which an animal of a distinct species had been evolved out of one of an entirely different organization; that there is no external evidence to support the hypothesis of such derivations, and that the naturalists of the evolution school habitually place the scene of operations in the region of scientific imagination? The discovery of truth is not likely to be much advanced by this mode of attacking opposite opinions, yet it could be used with as much propriety on the one side of this question as on the other. 3. Next, and completing the misrepresentation, we have the assertion that, "besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this hypothesis of special creations can not support itself internally--can not be framed into a coherent thought.... Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism when specially created is created out of nothing? If so, there is a supposed creation of matter, and the creation of matter is inconceivable, implies the establishment of a relation in thought between nothing and something--a relation of which one term is absent--an impossible relation.... Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from divine interposition do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. The case is one of those where men do not really believe, but _believe they believe_. For belief, properly so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed; and no such mental representation is here possible."[59]