Your other remarks are scarcely worthy of being quoted, as they prove nothing but your impertinence and presumption. You seem to put to God the dilemma: “Either let Büchner know all the secrets of your providence, or he will rebel against you, and even deny your existence.” You ask, Why this and why that? And because your weak brain fails to suggest the answer, you immediately conclude that things happen to be what they are, without a superior mind controlling their course. This is nice logic indeed! “Why should the vertebral column of man terminate in an appendage perfectly useless to him?” “Why should certain animals possess the organs of both sexes?” “Why are certain other animals so prolific that in a few years they might fill the seas and cover the earth, and find no more space or materials for their offspring?” “Why does nature produce monsters?” These questions may or may not be answered; but our ignorance is not the measure of things, and the existence of design in nature remains an unquestionable fact. Is not the very structure of our own bodies a masterpiece of design? A physician, like you, cannot plead ignorance on the subject. _Büchner._ Yet nature cannot have a design in producing monstrosities. “I saw in a veterinary cabinet a goat fully developed in every part, but born without a head. Can we imagine anything more absurd than the development of an animal the existence of which is impossible from the beginning? Prof. Lotze of Göttingen surpasses himself in the following remarks on monstrosities: ‘If the fœtus is without a brain, it would be but judicious, in a force having a free choice, to suspend its action, as this deficiency cannot be compensated. But, inasmuch as the formative forces continue their action, that such a miserable and purposeless creature may exist for a time, appears to us strikingly to prove that the final result always depends upon the disposition of purely mechanical definite forces, which, once set in motion, proceed straight on, according to the law of inertia, until they meet with an obstruction.’ This is plain language” (p. 99). Again, monstrosities “may be produced artificially by injuries done to the fœtus or to the ovum. Nature has no means of remedying such an injury. The impulse once given is, on the contrary, followed in a false direction, and in due time a monstrosity is produced. The purely mechanical process, in such cases, can be easily recognized. Can the idea of a conscious power acting with design be reconciled with such a result? And is it possible that the hand of the Creator should thus be bound by the arbitrary act of man?” (pp. 101, 102).