Look again at the diagram by which I have represented the life-history of this animal. The only mode in which it can begin is by a sudden sovereign act of power, an irruption into the circle. You may choose where the irruption shall occur; there must be a bursting-in at some point. Suppose it is at "calf;" or suppose it is at "embr. vesicle." Put a wafer at the point you choose, say the latter. This then is the real, actual commencement of a circle, to be henceforth ceaseless. But the embryonic vesicle necessarily implies a germinal vesicle, and this necessitates an ovum, and the ovum necessitates an ovary, and the ovary necessitates an entire animal,—and thus we have got a quarter round the circle in back development; we are irresistibly carried along the prochronic stages,—the stages of existence which were before existence commenced,—as if they had been diachronic, actually occurring within our personal experience.
If I know, as a historic fact, that the circle was commenced where I have put my wafer, I may begin it there; but there is, and can be, nothing in the phenomena to indicate a commencement there, any more than anywhere else, or, indeed, anywhere at all. The commencement, as a fact, I must learn from testimony; I have no means whatever of inferring it from phenomena.
Permit me, therefore, to repeat, as having been proved, these two propositions:—
All organic nature moves in a circle.
Creation is a violent irruption into the circle of nature.