The whole thought is absurd. It was not reached by an induction of facts, a study of phenomena, or any fair process of reasoning, but was arbitrarily created to rescue a dogma from otherwise inevitable rejection. It was the desperate clutch of a heady theologian reeling in a vortex of hostile argument, and ready to seize any fancy, however artificial, to save 3 Edward Warren, No Pre Existence, p. 74. 4 Epistola CLXVI. 5 De Anima, cap. x. et xix. himself from falling under the ruins of his system. Henry Woolner published in London, in 1655, a book called "Extraction of Soul: a sober and judicious inquiry to prove that souls are propagated; because, if they are created, original sin is impossible." The theological dogma of traduction has been presented in two forms. First, it is declared that all souls are developed out of the one substance of Adam's soul; a view that logically implies an ultimate attenuating diffusion, ridiculously absurd. Secondly, it is held that "the eating of the forbidden fruit corrupted all the vital fluids of Eve; and this corruption carried vicious and chaotic consequences into her ova, in which lay the souls of all her posterity, with infinitely little bodies, already existing."6 This form is as incredible as the other; for it equally implies a limitless distribution of souls from a limited deposit. As Whewell says, "This successive inclusion of germs (Einschachtelungs Theorie) implies that each soul contains an infinite number of germs."7 It necessarily excludes the formation of new spiritual substance: else original transmitted sin is excluded. The doctrine finds no parallelism anywhere else in nature. Who, no matter how wedded to the theology of original sin and transmitted death, would venture to stretch the same thesis over the animal races, and affirm that the dynamic principles, or animating souls, of all serpents, eagles, and lions, were once compressed in the first patriarchal serpent, eagle, or lion?