growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of
seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent
forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of
domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were
never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of
our position, that the Bible Genesis contains _the true key to the mystery
of life_. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be
reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes
of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as
Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial
bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more
perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and
the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the
more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[3] The emphatic
statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the
earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below
"specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement
that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions
favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the
life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.

And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human
thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein
there is functional activity; while a state, or _status_, is an incidence
determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and
its _status_--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first
instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity
dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply
the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is
begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very