_Büchner._ “If the contemplation of surrounding nature strikes us so much by its grandeur that we cannot divest ourselves of the idea of a direct creative cause, the origin of this feeling is owing to the fact that we contemplate as a whole the united effects of natural forces through a period of millions of years; and, thinking only of the present, and not of the past, cannot imagine that nature has produced all this out of itself. The law of analogies; the formation of prototypes; the necessary dependence upon external circumstances which organic bodies exhibit in their origin and form; the gradual development of higher organic forms from lower organisms; the circumstance that the origin of organic beings was not a momentary process, but continued through all geological periods; that each period is characterized by creatures peculiar to it, of which some individuals only are continued in the next period—all these relations rest upon incontrovertible facts, and are perfectly irreconcilable with the idea of a personal almighty creative power, which could not have adopted such a slow and gradual labor, and have rendered itself dependent upon the natural phases of the development of the earth” (pp. 84, 85). _Reader._ If this is your ground for asserting the origin of organic beings from the mere forces of matter, all I can say is that you should learn a little philosophy before you venture again to write a book for the public. Were you a philosopher, you would know that, independently of “the united effects of natural forces through a period of millions of years,” every grain of dust that floats in the air affords us a sufficient proof of the existence of “a personal almighty creative power”; your “law of analogies” would suggest to you the thought of a primitive source of life; “the formation of prototypes” would compel you to ask, Who formed them? and how could they be formed without an archetypal idea, which matter could not possess? You would see that nothing can be gained by asserting, as you do, that “the gradual development of the higher organic forms from lower organisms rests upon incontrovertible facts,” while you cannot cite a single one in support of your assertion. You would take care not to attribute to the Creator an imaginary waste of time in “the slow and gradual labor” of peopling the earth with organic beings, nor entertain the absurd notion that he would have rendered himself “dependent upon the natural phases of the development of the earth,” merely because his action harmonized with the order of things he had created. Lastly, you would have kept in view that the fact of which you were bound to give an explanation was not the development of new organisms from existing organisms, but the origin of the first organisms themselves from inorganic matter. Why did you leave aside this last point, than which no other had a greater need of demonstration?