Now, if we regard the appearance of the visible universe, and approach it as we would any other phenomenon, we have only two alternatives before us. Creation is not one of these, inasmuch as we are carried by such an act out of the universe altogether. We are, therefore, driven to look to some kind of development as the cause of the appearance of the visible universe. This development may either have been through the living or through the dead; either it was the result of a natural operation of the invisible universe, or it was brought about by means of intelligence residing in that universe and working through its laws. To determine which of these two alternatives is the more admissible, we must bear in mind the nature of the production, and argue about it just as we should argue about anything else. 217. Now, this production was, as far as we can judge, a sporadic or abrupt act, and the substance produced, that is to say the atoms which form the material substratum of the present universe, bear (as Herschel and Clerk-Maxwell have well said) from their uniformity of constitution all the marks of being manufactured articles. Whether we regard the various elementary atoms as separate productions, or (according to Prout and Lockyer) view them as produced by the coming together of some smaller kind of primordial atom—in either case, and even specially so in the latter case, we think that they look like manufactured articles. Indeed, we have already shown (Art. 164) that development without life, that is to say dead development, does not tend to produce uniformity of structure in the products which it gives rise to. 218. Thus the argument is in favour of the production of the visible universe by means of an intelligent agency residing in the invisible universe.