At the present time, the inorganic world is clearly the exclusive source of all the matter found in living beings. All living beings construct their bodies out of inorganic substances in the process of nutrition, and render back to the inorganic world, by dissimilation and death, whatever they have taken from it. We must conclude, therefore, the matter of the primordial organisms was likewise derived from the inorganic world. But we are not warranted in concluding that this process of derivation was an active evolution. On the contrary, all evidence is against the supposition that brute matter is able to evolve of itself into living matter. It can, indeed, be transformed into plants, animals, and men through the action of an appropriate external agent (_i.e._ solely through the agency of the living organism), but it cannot acquire the perfections of living matter by means of its own inherent powers. It cannot vitalize, or sensitize, itself through the unaided activity of its own physicochemical energies. Only when it comes under the superior influence of preëxistent life can it ascend to higher degrees of entitive perfection. It does not become of itself life, sensibility, and intelligence. It must first be drawn into communion with what is already alive, before it can acquire life and sensibility, or share indirectly in the honors of intelligence (as the substrate of the cerebral imagery whence the human mind abstracts its conceptual thought). Apart from this unique influence, inorganic matter is impotent to raise itself in the scale of existence, but, if captured, molded, and transmuted by a living being, it may progress to the point of forming with the human soul one single nature, one single substance, one single person. The evolution of matter exemplified in organic metabolism is obviously passive, and such an evolution of the primal organisms out of non-living matter even the opponents of the hypothesis of spontaneous generation concede. But spontaneous generation implies an active evolution of the living from the lifeless, and this is the point around which the controversy wages. It would, of course, be utterly irrational to deny to the Supreme Lord and Author of Life the power of vivifying matter previously inanimate and inert, and hence the origin of organic life from inorganic matter by a formative (not creative) act of the Creator is the conclusion to which the denial of abiogenesis logically leads.