In short, we now know that our taxonomic classifications have been marked off on altogether too narrow lines. This has tended greatly to confuse the question at issue. But from our enlarged views of the laws and nature of heredity and variation, as well as from the original intent of the term _species_ as defined by the great scientist who originated it, the verdict of an impartial investigator must be that we have never seen a new species originate by any natural or artificial method since the dawn of scientific observation. Here again we find the record of Creation confirmed; for the failure of the thousands of modern investigators to originate genuine new species proves that in this respect also Creation is not now going on. And all the analogies from the origin of matter, of energy, of life, and from the laws of the reproduction of cells, indicate that we have at last found rock bottom truth regarding the vexed question of the origin of species. So far as science can observe and record, each living thing on earth, in air, in water, reproduces "after its kind." VII GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS I In all the previous chapters I have not been giving any very new facts or any discoveries of my own. True, my conclusions from the facts may seem novel; but in general I have been giving merely facts which are almost universally acknowledged by educated men. The conservation laws of matter and of energy, the impassable gulf between the living and the not-living, the laws governing cell multiplication, are matters of common knowledge and will be found in the appropriate college text-books throughout the civilized world. Even the facts which I have presented regarding variation and heredity are admitted in one way or another by practically all biologists. But in following our general subject into the field of geology, I shall be obliged to present some comprehensive truths and general conclusions which are not so widely acknowledged, because only recently brought to light. However, as these facts and conclusions may seem very new and strange to many, I shall endeavor to build up my argument wholly on the recorded observations of the very highest authorities rather than on my own unsupported testimony; though for the sake of brevity I shall be obliged to refer the reader to my "Fundamentals of Geology" (1913) for some of the details.