And, in the view of the facts of geology, it follows that all living animals and plants are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch. Here is a plain issue, and one, as has been said, to be discussed without prejudice. That the innumerable forms of organic life should thus have been genetically derived one from another, is no more difficult to conceive than that they should have come into existence at all. Moreover, it appears to our minds almost a first principle that natural law must suffice to account for the phenomena of nature from beginning to end, and that any system is self-condemned which finds anywhere in these phenomena evidence of a non-natural, or supernatural, interposition. Has not such a theologian as Suarez, following St. Augustine, laid it down as an axiom[243] that God does not directly interfere with the operations of Nature, when He can effect His purposes through natural causes? Undoubtedly, too, it is difficult for our minds to imagine in what way, except through genetic evolution, the successive production of more and more developed types could be effected. But, as has before been observed, what seems to us probable is not therefore proved to be true. What we want are facts, and by facts we must be ready to abide. At the same time, it is not very easy to understand the supreme importance which evolutionists generally appear to attach to the descent of all living creatures from some _one_ original, and their abhorrence of the idea that the power, whatever it was, which first produced life, may have operated repeatedly, at different epochs, to repeat the production. It seems to be assumed that this must imply "miracle" and interruption of the continuity of Nature, to admit which is irrational and unscientific. But since life did unquestionably once originate somehow, which Science makes no attempt to deny, why should it be so improper to suppose that it originated more than once, at various times and in various forms, and that, consequently, genetic descent with modification, or "Evolution," is not the explanation of typic development? As Sir J. W. Dawson writes[244] concerning the oyster tribe, whereof two species are found in the Coal Measures (one European and the other American), and a continuous succession of species ever since: All these species may have proceeded from one origin, by descent with modification, or, on the other hand, the same causes which led to their origination in the Carboniferous may have operated again and again.