NOTE.--It will readily occur to the reader that Sophereus might most pertinently have asked: Whence did the primal cell originate? It is conceived of as the ultimate unit of organizable matter; invisible to the naked eye, perhaps incapable of being reached by the microscope, but consisting of an infinitesimally small portion of matter, more or less organized in itself, and possessing a capacity to unite with itself other minute particles of matter, and so to form larger aggregates of molecules. The hypothesis is, that this single cell has given origin to all animated organisms, and, through an indefinite series of such organisms, to the human race. The single cell, then, having this capacity and this extraordinary destiny, was either the first and only one of its kind, or it was one of many of the same kind. If we select any supposed point of time in the far antecedent history of matter, the question may be asked whether there existed at first but one such cell, or many. If there were many of such cells, how came they to exist? If one only was selected out of many, for this extraordinary destiny of giving origin to all the animated organisms, who or what made the selection for this transcendent office of the one cell? If there never was but one such cell, how did it come to exist? As these questions are clearly pertinent, the effort to answer them inevitably conducts us to the idea of creation, or else to the conclusion that the numerous cells and the selected one had no origin; that the selection was not made, but was accidental; or that the one cell, if there never was but one, was not a created thing. Human reason can not accept this conclusion. FOOTNOTES: [106] "Biology," i, p. 482. [107] "Biology," i, Appendix, pp. 483, 484. [108] "Biology," i, p. 408. [109] "Biology," i, pp. 409, 410. [110] "Biology," i, p. 482. [111] Now contained in "Biology," i, Appendix. [112] Quoted by M. Guizot in his "History of France," vol. vi, p. 328. Guizot observes that Buffon was "absolutely unshackled by any religious prejudice," and that he "involuntarily recurred to the account given in Genesis." CHAPTER X. "Species," "races," and "varieties"--Sexual division--Causation. The two friendly disputants have again met. Sophereus begins their further colloquy, in an effort to reach a common understanding of certain terms, so that they may not be speaking of different things.