But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they
all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while
matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes,
modifications, combinations, etc.,[9] chemically as well as molecularly
considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a
mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the
argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some
one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.

For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications,
etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest
statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as
well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at
some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed
plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the
materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine
conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included),
as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life,
must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at
some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite
number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of
molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the
possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the
infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary,
cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes
occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably
follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity,
or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging
Intelligence" of the universe.