# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S187
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Toward the Grounding of a New Physico-Theology. 187

it was reserved for the newest phases of German philosophy to turn verses 26 and 27 of Genesis, according to which God made man in His own image, quite literally upside down — for the wisdom of the now so widely spread Feuerbachian school has, as is well known, succeeded in discovering that it is not God who made man, but rather (the master's own ipsissima verba) man who made God in his image — is it not a significant phenomenon that the longtime teacher of former faithful pupils and collaborators on his works, Carl Vogt and Desor (from whom, to be sure, he has for years disassociated himself), Louis Agassiz, devotes a large part of the first volume of his excellent work to considerations and investigations that have long been regarded among us as antiquated.

In order to carry through his proofs of the necessity of assuming a thinking, personal Creator of organic beings, the author begins, in the second section, with the demonstration that the most various types of animals and plants appeared under like circumstances. From this it necessarily follows further that, despite entirely identical physical influences, particular circumstances must have been present at the first origin of animals which called forth the various forms. Since the physical forces active on the earth have at all times been essentially the same and have worked according to the same laws as now, and since at present no organic bodies can be produced by them, this shows that they are insufficient to call living beings into existence. It is likewise clear that for every species of animal that has maintained itself through a series of generations, its relations to the surrounding world — both of individuals to one another and to genus, family, and every higher systematic order — must have been fixed in advance. The same thing is proved by the geographic distribution of animals and plants. The author dwells on this occasion on the curious occurrence of the blind fish (Amblyopsis spelaeus), the blind crayfish, and the blind insects in the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

The same conclusions may be drawn from the fact that identical animal forms appear under the most various external circumstances. Physical and climatic influences are wholly insufficient to explain this. Thus, for example, there exists no difference between the herrings of the arctic, the temperate, the tropical, and the antarctic zones, any more than between the foxes and wolves of the most remote regions — a fact for which countless further examples could be adduced. External physical causes and the origin of organic beings never stand to one another as cause and effect. Those effects which climate and physical influences produce on plants and animals concern themselves with such slight changes that the most essential and important peculiarities are not in the least touched by them.

The whole plan, the logical connection, the wonderful harmony, the infinite diversity within unity, which run through the groups of the verte-