Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/321

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violation of the human essentials of freedom of choice and responsibility, be developed physically to a state equal to that of animals that are capable of self-support at birth. At creation only the animal part of his nature could have been developed by the Creator, for the human or rational part must be developed by self-action, since only what is self-developed can be human as distinguished from animal. Yet he had within him all the faculties and possibilities that he now has, just as the acorn has within it potentially an oak. The advancement of man through the unfolding of his faculties is neither creation nor evolution, but development; development of faculties given in creation, existing potentially in the seed, and manifested in the continual progress of humanity.

That first forms were created in the seed and then developed is conclusive from the fact that such an order the laws of creation, which are unchangeable, now impose. Nor is there any known instance where potencies not initially in the seed were subsequently developed. The potencies in the seed fix the species, and determine its limits in development. The plant seed receives the current of life from that which flows through the parent plant, and the animal seed receives the current of life that flows through