Theology looked smaller still. Haeckel began at the simplest cell, went from change to change--from form to form--followed the line of development, the path of life, until he reached the human race. It was all natural. There had been no interference from without. I read the works of these great men--of many others--and became convinced that they were right, and that all the theologians--all the believers in "special creation" were absolutely wrong. The Garden of Eden faded away, Adam and Eve fell back to dust, the snake crawled into the grass, and Jehovah became a miserable myth. IX. I TOOK another step. What is matter--substance? Can it be destroyed--annihilated? Is it possible to conceive of the destruction of the smallest atom of substance? It can be ground to powder--changed from a solid to a liquid--from a liquid to a gas--but it all remains. Nothing is lost--nothing destroyed. Let an infinite God, if there be one, attack a grain of sand--attack it with infinite power. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot surrender. It defies all force. Substance cannot be destroyed. Then I took another step. If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could not have been created. The indestructible must be uncreateable. And then I asked myself: What is force? We cannot conceive of the creation of force, or of its destruction. Force may be changed from one form to another--from motion to heat--but it cannot be destroyed--annihilated. If force cannot be destroyed it could not have been created. It is eternal. Another thing--matter cannot exist apart from force. Force cannot exist apart from matter. Matter could not have existed before force. Force could not have existed before matter. Matter and force can only be conceived of together. This has been shown by several scientists, but most clearly, most forcibly by Büchner. Thought is a form of force, consequently it could not have caused or created matter. Intelligence is a form of force and could not have existed without or apart from matter. Without substance there could have been no mind, no will, no force in any form, and there could have been no substance without force. Matter and force were not created. They have existed from eternity. They cannot be destroyed. There was, there is, no creator. Then came the question: Is there a God? Is there a being of infinite intelligence, power and goodness, who governs the world? There can be goodness without much intelligence--but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together. In nature I see, or seem to see, good and evil--intelligence and ignorance--goodness and cruelty--care and carelessness--economy and waste. I see means that do not accomplish the ends--designs that seem to fail. To me it seems infinitely cruel for life to feed on life--to create animals that devour others.