The author then gives a quotation from LeConte, illustrating the extremely various ways in which matter and energy act on the different planes of their existence, while "The passage from one plane upward to another is not a gradual passage by sliding scale, but at one bound. When the necessary conditions are present, a new and higher form of force at once appears, like birth into a higher sphere.... It is no gradual process, but sudden, like birth into a higher sphere."[98] The argument then proceeds as follows: "The living at some time originated from the not-living. =We call it creation.= Can any one find a better name? It is preposterous to call it a process of development or evolution due to the inherent properties of the atoms, and effected by them alone. And yet it is doubtless as much according to 'natural law' as are the invariable and exact combinations of chemistry. We do not understand the ultimate reasons for chemical affinity any more than we do for gravitation. They are only expressions of the methodical, order-loving mind of Deity. Creation was only another action of the same mind, and we are not really finding any new difficulty when we say that the processes or the reasons for creative action are beyond our comprehension. When we can really solve some of the myriad problems right before our eyes, it will be time enough to complain about creation being incomprehensible or contrary to 'natural law.' "Well, then, remembering that, even according to Huxley's 'act of philosophic faith,' the origin of the living from the not-living must at some time have taken place according to natural law, =why should we suppose that such a process was confined to one example=? If, when the young planet 'was passing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy,' the 'necessary conditions' were favorable for one such creation of life, =why not a few billion=? Would the production of a few billion such beginnings of protoplasm be any less 'natural' than of one alone? Remember, however, that both the arrangement of these 'necessary conditions,' as well as the endowing of matter with these 'properties,' not only requires a cause, but this cause must be intelligent, for there is indisputable design in this first origin of life.... The food for a developing embryo might, for aught that we know, be conveyed to it direct from the ultimate laboratories of nature, and it thus be built up by protoplasm in the usual way, without the medium of a parent form--other than the great Father of all. Or would it be any less according to natural law to believe that a bird passed through all the usual stages of embryonic development from the not-living up to the full-fledged songster of the skies =in one day=--the fifth day of creation? And =if one example, why not a million=? For, remember that the youthful earth was then passing through strange conditions, 'which,'