illions"), that this "matter" was all ready (if
I may so speak) to spring into organized form and being to take shape on
earth--what shape should it take? Why (e.g.) an elephant? Why not any
other animal, or a nondescript--a form which no zoologist could place,
recognize, or classify? The _form_, the ideal structure, the _formula_,
of the genus elephant must somehow have come into existence _before_ the
obedient materials and the suitable forces of nature could work
themselves together to the desired end.

Mr. Mivart has defined "creation" at page 290 of his "Genesis of
Species." There is original creation, derivative or secondary creation
(where the present form has descended from an ancestor that was
originally "directly" created), and conventional creation (as when a man
"creates a fortune," meaning that he produces a complex state or
arrangement out of simpler materials). That is perfectly true, so far;
but it is only a verbal definition, and still does not go inside, into
the _idea_ involved. We must go farther.

In every act of creation, two requisites can clearly be distinguished:
(1) the matter of life, and the forces, affinities, and local
surroundings necessary; and (2) the type, plan, ideal, or formula, to
realize or produce which, the forces and the matter are to act and
react. This second is all-essential; without it the first would only
produce a limbo of

"Unaccomplisht works of Nature's hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt.[1]"

[Footnote 1: "Paradise Lost," iii. 455.]

No _creation_ in _any_ sense whatever could come out of it.

In the same way, when we speak of the Divine Artificer "creating," or
saying "Let there be," there are two things implied: (i) the Divine plan
or type-form, and its utterance or delivery (so to speak) to the
builder-forces and materials; (2) the result or the translation into
tangible existence of the Divine plan.

In every passage speaking of creation it _possible_ that both processes
may be implied; it may be clear from the text (as in Genesis i. 1) that
this is so. But it is equally possible that the first point only, which
in some aspects is really the essential matter, is alone spoken of.

And I submit that, given the general fact that God originated everything
in heaven and earth (as first of all stated generally in Genesis i.
1-3), the essential part of the _detailed_ or _specific_ creation
subsequently spoken of, was the Divine origination of the types,