have not their being in themselves, and are real only as they
participate, through the creative act, of the Divine being. The
germ can no more be developed than it could exist without God,
and no more develop itself than it could create itself. What is
called the law of development is in the germ; but that law or
force can operate only in conjunction with another force or other
forces. All development, as all growth, is by accretion or
assimilation. The assimilating force is, if you will, in the
germ, but the matter assimilated comes and must come from abroad.
Every herdsman knows it, and knows that to rear his stock he must
supply them with appropriate food; every husbandman knows it, and
knows that to raise a crop of corn, be must plant the seed in a
soil duly prepared, and which will supply the gases needed for
its germination, growth, flowering, boiling, and ripening. In
all created things, in all things not complete in themselves, in
all save God, in whom there is no development possible, for He
is, as say the schoolmen, most pure act, in whom there is no
unactualized possibility, the same law holds good. Development
is always the resultant of two factors, the one the thing itself,
the other some external force co-operating with it, exciting
it, and aiding it to act.

Hence the praemotio physica of the Thomists, and the praevenient
and adjuvant grace of the theologians, without which no one can
begin the Christian life, and which must needs be supernatural
when the end is supernatural. The principle of life in all
orders is the same, and human activity no more suffices for
itself in one order than in another.

Here is the reason why the savage tribe never rises to a