All the living beings which people the surface of the globe are composed materially of some of the elements of the earth’s substance.  The birth therefore of the first living beings could only offer to the view the bringing together of some of the elements of the soil; this is not the matter in question.  The primitive cellules were to all appearance alike.  Weighed in scales, opened by the scalpel, placed beneath the microscope, they would have offered no appreciable difference; I grant it:  it is the supposition we have agreed to make.  Therefore they were identical, say you.  I deny it, and here is my proof:  If the cellules had been identical, they would not have given, in the successive development of their generations, the diverse beings which people the world, and the relations which unite them.  Alike to your eyes, the cellules differed therefore by a concealed property which their development brought to light.  You have told me as a matter of history how the organization of the world was manifested by slow degrees; you have given me no account of the cause of that organization.

It is said in reply:  “We do know the origin of those developments which you refer to a supposed intelligence.  The living beings are transformed by the action of food, climate, soil, mode of life.  They experience slight variations in the first instance; but these variations are established, and increase; and where you see a plan, types, and species, there is really only the result of modifications slowly accumulated.  Nature disposes of periods which have no limit, and everything has come at its proper time, in the course of ages.”  They are always proposing to us to accept of time as the substitute for intelligence.  I am tempted to say with Alcestis: 

     Time in this matter, Sirs, has nought to do.[127]

You know what intelligence is; you know it by knowing yourself.  Is there, or is there not, intelligence in the universe?  Allow me to reproduce some old questions:  If a machine implies intelligence, does the universe imply none?  If a telescope implies intelligence in the optician, does the eye imply none in its author?  The production of a variety of the camelia, or of a new breed of swine, demands of the gardener and the breeder the patient and prolonged employment of the understanding; and are our entire flora and fauna to be explained without any intervention of mind?  And if there is intelligence in the universe, is this intelligence a chemical result of the combination of molecules? is it a physical result of caloric or of electricity?  It is in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited time; what has time to do here?  Whether the world as it now exists arose out of nothing, or whether it was slowly formed during thousands of ages, the question remains the same.  With matter and time, you will not succeed in creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy utterly beyond our power.  In the theory of slow causes,