or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives
or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of
"seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no
plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which
seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more
comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of
life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used
it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms
IfIEuroI muII1/4I+-I"a?1/2II?a1/2 I cubedIOEI cubedI?I expressing "the _laws of generation contained in
matter_"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual
connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let
the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
yielding fruit after his kind, _whose germinal principle of life, each in
itself after its kind, is upon the earth_"

We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most
complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better
scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the
Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.

But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection.
The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true
rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal
development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to
do with the '_odium theologicum_?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both
theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and
agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great
scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of
nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in
the Hebrew _Hagiographa_, of what less value is it to science than if it