This, as Dr.Christlieb observes of Bauer's kindred system of criticism, is 'beginning without a beginning--everything is already extant'.

We may as well start with species, as with protoplasm, if the inquiry is not to be pushed beyond the fact.

The evolutionist is bound to answer whether the process is eternal, or how it began to be.

Either it had a beginning or it had not; if it had, creation out of nothing is conceded, and there is nothing left to dispute.

It is puerile to except to the _frequency_ of creative acts on the ordinary hypothesis of specific origin, because it is freely open to science to reduce the several 'kinds' to the lowest _minimum_ it can experimentally establish.