“I don’t mean that,” rejoined the physician. “What I mean is, that to the great mass of mankind the habit of attributing to a Creator, of whom they know nothing, the formation of things they cannot understand, prevents their desire to enlarge the boundaries of their knowledge. Dog fanciers know perfectly well that the English bull-dog is the creation of the breeders; they understand just how the bull dog has acquired his peculiar characteristics. They attribute animals in general, perhaps, to God; they take the credit of the bull-dog to themselves. The gardener knows just how to develop the particular dahlia he wants; he knows all the tricks and interferences of art required to produce the flower of a certain form and colour. He attributes the creation of plants in general to God; the dahlia you ask for, and which is in his particular line, he places to his own account. As men enlarge the bounds of their knowledge, there will become less and less room for God. I know a man who has a brown mark on his arm, which he calls a mushroom; he is particularly fond of ketchup; he attributes this taste to the fact that he is marked with a mushroom. He declares that during the mushroom season this brown mark (not a bit like a mushroom, by the way) comes to greater perfection; as the season passes it diminishes, till at last there is, he declares, very little to be seen. “Now, at present, maternal impressions and birth marks are very little understood by scientific men; the whole question is still under investigation. By-and-bye the whole mystery will be solved, and we shall have an answer to the difficulty. Meanwhile the common folk will persist in their fanciful theories, while the more intelligent will suspend their judgment till we can influence it by science. This is my attitude about creation, as you call it. Yours is the attitude of Mrs. Gamp towards the strawberry marks. She persists in explaining, _Voilà tout!_” “In this instance Mrs. Gamp has a good deal of reason on her side, and it is not unlikely that her explanation may have its foundation in fact. The uneducated mind has often made discoveries by observing and comparing this sort of facts which scientific men have after much scoffing been compelled to admit are correct statements of natural phenomena.