mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb." at one. In this opinion, Bruno and his eulogist are In his controversy with Mr. Martineau, a year after the delivery of the Belfast Address, Dr. Tyndall credits "pure matter with the astonishing building power displayed in crystals and trees." He "figures" to himself the embryological growth of the babe, and its appearance in due time, a living miracle, with all its organs and all their implications." He dilates, justly and forcibly, on the wonders of eye and ear: the eye "with its lens, and its humours, and its miraculous retina behind;" the ear" with its tympanum, cochlea, and Corti's organ-an instrument of three thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain, and employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret, antecedent to all consciousness, the sonorous tremors of the external world. All this has been accomplished," he tells us, "not only without man's contrivance, but without his knowledge, the secret of his own organization having been withheld from him since his birth in the immeasurable past, until the other day." And then he adds, "Matter I define as that mysterious thing by 1 "Materialism and its Opponents,” p. 594. which all this is accomplished."1 No wonder then that Bruno should be lauded for his "closer" approximation "to our present line of thought." But this expression-" our present line of thought "-is suggestive, and throws us back on a previous passage in the Address, in which we are told that "to construct the universe in idea it was necessary to have some notion of its constituent parts-of what Lucretius subsequently called the 'First Beginnings.'"s What has "our The "First Beginnings!" present line of thought" to say on these? We shall do well to question it. And, to begin at the beginning, we shall do well to note-not merely the order, but-the fact here admitted. There was-no matter whenan actual Beginning: a first start; distinct, definite. Antecedently, there was a prior time, when this first start had not been made. process of Evolution, a "process of unravelling and unfolding," is a process which then had not begun. It is therefore not eternal. It had a beginning. But who began it? 1 "Materialism and its Opponents," p. 598. 3 Ibid., p. 2. The You postulate "Matter." But in so doing you are hypothecating a substance which before the "First Beginning" had not begun to be. How did it originate? Unable to answer that question, you make another assumption. You postulate "eternity" for that "matter" of whose origin you can give no account. But this accumulation of postulates will not help you. What is this matter which-impelled by the exigencies of Agnostic Evolution-you assume to have been self-originated? Make its essence what you will-extension, with Descartes; or palpableness, with Fechner-Matter is always, and is manifestly, the local lodgment, the objective manifestation, of Power. "The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order ; else how could it rot?" Matter, Force, Motion, are not unknown to Science; but of matter selforiginated and self-sustained, of matter selfexistent and therefore eternal; of self-originated force, or self-originated motion; of all these throughout the realm of the inorganic world, Science knows nothing. When therefore we have granted "the eternity of matter," the theory of Evolution is as far as 1 Carlyle: "Sartor Resartus," book i. chap. xi. p. 43. ever from being able to make a "beginning." That theory requires not merely matter, but matter in motion. Not merely matter in mass, but matter in its constituent atoms. Matter so minutely subdivided as to be immeasurably beyond the sphere of visibility; and yet matter not within the sphere of infinite divisibility. "The atoms" are "the first beginnings." 1 But speculation is at fault as to the mode in which, or the power by which, they "first began." In his panegyric on Lucretius, Professor Tyndall draws special attention to his "strong scientific imagination; "2 and tells us that "his vaguely grand conception of the atoms falling eternally through space suggested the nebular hypothesis to Kant, its first propounder." The "eternity" of these falling atoms, however, must not be confounded with the antecedent "eternity" of their origination. Like the "eternity" of the rhetorical preacher, it has its own statute of limitations. It came to an end. While it lasted there might have been seen, “far beyond the limits of our visible world" (by aid of a 1 "Belfast Address," p. 8. 2 Ibid., p. 9. 3 Ibid., p. 10. * Eternity: "An infinite candle; lighted--at both ends"! "strong scientific imagination"), "atoms innumerable," "falling silently through immeasurable intervals of time and space." 1 "2 "Falling eternally through space:" "falling silently through immeasurable intervals:" but this eternal silence was broken by "great shocks of sound," "the mechanical shock of the atoms; "1 and this eternal falling came to an end when "the interaction of the atoms' came to a beginning. How came that beginning? Nothing more simple. At first, the atoms, silently falling, fell in parallel lines. After that they began to deflect from the perpendicular. Not all of them; nor all in the same direction: but only so many, and in so many directions as were necessary to produce "the mechanical shock," and "the interaction." But falling is motion, and matter is inert, and atoms in motion are atoms in which inertness has been overcome by a force external to themselves, and falling atoms are atoms gravitating towards a centre. What centre? and how originated? Why should atoms in motion have moved originally all in one direction? or why should they have ceased to do so? What, and whence, is that 1 "Belfast Address," p. 10. 2 Ibid., p. 8. |