of sublimely skilful craftsman was able to
fashion them?"

"They were made automatically by the various trees and plants."

"But who conceived the plan of the trees and plants?"

"The trees and plants were produced automatically by other little seeds,
like these."

"But the first one of these seeds, or the first one of these trees--who
conceived and executed that?"

"Oh, that," says the scientific intellect, "came about through a process
of evolution, which extends way back thousands of centuries. We have
studied it carefully and reasoned it all out to our entire satisfaction.

"These plant seeds are only one part of it. There are also all the
animals and animalculae, including man. There are thousands of different
kinds of living creatures and each kind has a distinct design from all
the rest, which appears to have been determined by the special purpose
for which it was intended.

"As a matter of fact, they are nothing more or less than the results of
evolution, natural selection and the survival of the fittest. All we
require for the demonstration of our theory, is a little bit of
protoplasm at the beginning of things and a mass of elemental matter in
an unformed state."

"But," say I, "are you sure you are not trying to befuddle me and
befuddle yourself by the use of obscure words? You use the word
"protoplasm"--but if you mean by that a kind of machine, like the orange
pit or the red-wood seed, your evolution theory and your scientific
chain of reasoning and all your big words merely bring us back to the
point where we started and really explain nothing at all. The orange
seed, if left to itself in the midst of elemental matter will produce a
certain kind of tree and countless oranges. A bit of protoplasm, if left
to itself in the midst of elemental matter, will not only produce an
orange tree and a red-wood tree, but an elephant, a spider, a human
being--all the countless species of living things to be found in the
universe. It may take the protoplasm a longer time to turn all this out,
but it is a bigger job and time is of small account in such a
consideration.

"All I can say is that I prostrate myself in abject and bewildered
admiration before that bit of protoplasm. If anything could be more
wonderful than the orange seed with which we started, your protoplasm is
certainly it. It is a miracle of a million miracles.

"But there is one thing you forgot to tell me--the only thing of any
real interest