Look again at the diagram by which I have represented the life-history of this animal. The only mode in which it can begin is by a sudden sovereign act of power, an irruption into the circle. You may choose _where_ the irruption shall occur; there must be a bursting-in at some point. Suppose it is at "calf;" or suppose it is at "embr. vesicle." Put a wafer at the point you choose, say the latter. This then is the real, actual commencement of a circle, to be henceforth ceaseless. But the embryonic vesicle necessarily implies a germinal vesicle, and this necessitates an ovum, and the ovum necessitates an ovary, and the ovary necessitates an entire animal,--and thus we have got a quarter round the circle in back development; we are irresistibly carried along the prochronic stages,--the stages of existence which were before existence commenced,--as if they had been diachronic, actually occurring within our personal experience. If I know, as a _historic fact_, that the circle was commenced where I have put my wafer, I may begin it there; but there is, and can be, nothing in the _phenomena_ to indicate a commencement there, any more than anywhere else, or, indeed, anywhere at all. The commencement, as a fact, I must learn from testimony; I have no means whatever of inferring it from phenomena. * * * * * Permit me, therefore, to repeat, as having been proved, these two propositions:-- ALL ORGANIC NATURE MOVES IN A CIRCLE. <sc>Creation is a violent irruption into the circle of nature.</sc> VII. PARALLELS AND PRECEDENTS. (_Plants._) "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding."--JOB xxxviii. 4. Since every organism, considering it, throughout its generations, as an unit, has been created, or made to commence existence, it is manifest that it was created or made to commence existence at some moment of time. I will ask some kind geological reader to imagine that moment, and to accompany me in an ideal tour of inspection among the creatures, taking up each for examination at the instant that it has been called into existence. Do not be alarmed! I am not about to assume that the moment in question was six thousand years ago, and no more; I will not rule the actual date at all; you, my geological friend, shall settle the chronology just as you please, or, if you like it better, we will leave the chronological date out of the inquiry, as an element not relevant to it. It may have been six hundred years ago, or six thousand, or sixty times six millions; let it for the present remain an indeterminate quantity. Only please to remember that the date _was_ a reality, whether we can fix it or not; it _was_ as precise a moment as the moment in which I write this word.