It therefore makes it reasonable to extend, if possible, the very same agency which we find operating in the field of biology, also to the inorganic world.

If on the grounds brought forward the action of intelligence may be affirmed in the production of man's bodily structure, it becomes probable _a priori_ that it may also be predicated of the formative action by which has been produced the animals which minister to him, and all organic life whatsoever.

Nay more, it is then congruous to expect analogous action in the development of crystalline and colloidal structures, and in that of all chemical compositions, in geological evolutions, and the formation not only of this earth, but of the solar system and whole sidereal universe.
If such really be the direction in which physical science, philosophically considered, points; if intelligence may thus be seen to preside over the evolution of each system of worlds and the unfolding of every blade of grass--this grand result harmonizes indeed with the teachings of faith that God acts and concurs, in the natural order, with those laws of the material universe which were not only instituted by His will, but are sustained by His concurrence; and we are thus enabled to discern in the natural order, however darkly, the Divine Author of nature--Him in whom "we live, and move, and have our being." But if this view is accepted, then it is no longer absolutely {282} necessary to suppose that any action different in kind took place in the production of man's body, from that which took place in the production of the bodies of other animals, and of the whole material universe.
Of course, if it _can_ be demonstrated that that difference which Mr.
Wallace asserts really exists, it is plain that we then have to do with facts not only harmonizing with religion, but, as it were, preaching and proclaiming it.
It is not, however, necessary for Christianity that any such view should prevail.

Man, according to the old scholastic definition, is "a rational animal" (_animal rationale_), and his animality is distinct in nature from his rationality, though inseparably joined, during life, in one common personality.

This animal body must have had a different source from that of the spiritual soul which informs it, from the distinctness of the two orders to which those two existences severally belong.
Scripture seems plainly to indicate this when it says that "God made man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This is a plain and direct statement that man's _body_ was _not_ created in the primary and absolute sense of the word, but was evolved from pre-existing material (symbolized by the term "dust of the earth"), and was therefore only _derivatively created_, i.e.by the operation of secondary laws.