Now, if the Cause which produces animals and plants is impenetrable, incomprehensible, etc., Spencer could not possibly know whether each animal and plant is directly and specially made by the Creator or not; nor could he say, logically, that there is no evidence of special creation; for he admits that the Cause is “inscrutable” to him. But there is abundant evidence that each animal and plant is a new direct and special creation, for the obvious reason that no other hypothesis can explain and account for the admitted facts. Haeckel, (Evolution of Man, p. 26), says the first one, or the first few, animals that appeared on our earth arose “by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter.” On the same page he says: “Life is only a physical phenomenon. All the plants and animals, with man at their head, are to be explained in structure and life, by mechanical or efficient causes, without any appeal to final causes, just as in the case of minerals and other inorganic bodies. This applies equally to the origin of the various species. We must not assume any original creation … to explain this, but a natural, continuous and necessary evolution.” Prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, belief in the theory of special creation was well nigh universal among scientists as well as laymen. But immediately after the publication of that work the scientific world accepted Darwin’s theory as absolute truth, not only as to animals and plants, but extended the Darwinian principle of materialism to all other branches of science. Materialism permeated all literature and became a fad. It fostered “higher criticism,” agnosticism, infidelity and atheism. It destroyed human hope and enthroned despair. It shook and rent the church from the corner stone to the spire. According to the materialist, there is no such thing as a personal God, nor a human soul. He maintains that life, intellect, memory and will-power are mere properties of the human body as a physical structure; and that death works the absolute annihilation of the body and the Ego. In his view, there is no life, punishment nor pleasure after death. He, therefore, resolves to make the most of his life, and to get all the ease, comfort and pleasure that it affords, without regard to anything that may happen after death. He has no fear of any final judgment, nor of God. He is not restrained by any moral law, nor by any religious obligation. He fears nothing but publicity, public opinion, and the criminal statutes. Hence, lying, cheating, fraud, perjury, theft, robbery, murder, suicide.