"Bodies are thoughts precipitated into space."-Novalis. "The universe is a thought, as well as a thing. The thought includes the origination of the forces and their law, as well as the combination and use of them. It follows then, that the universe is controlled by a single thought, or the thought of an individual thinker." -President Porter. "Molecular law is the profoundest expression of the Divine Will."-Professor Dana. "To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes?"--Carlyle. CHAPTER X. ATOMS. BUT these magnificent achievements the Vertebral Column, the Fostering Bosom, the Perfect Brain-with their inexplicable origin, their profound significance, their limitless results, have been accomplished by the cosmical atoms alone. Outside those atoms, or beyond them, there is not now, nor has there been at any time, any existence whatever. No substance, no essence, no entity, no force, no motion. "Matter is the origin of all that exists; all natural and mental forces are inherent in it."1 "The existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour.' For "the fundamental proposition of evolution" is, as we have seen, "that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was com 1 Buchner, ut sup., p. 96. 2 Prof. Huxley, ut sup., p. 64. posed." In a word-and that, the word of Lucretius, adopted and adorned in the Belfast Address-" The Atoms are the first beginnings." But What then are these ultimate inorganic atoms. on which (according to the hypothesis of Development) everything depends? The idea expressed by the word itself is simply the idea of "matter" in minimis, arising only from an arrest by a supposed physical limit, of a geometrical divisibility possible without end. "things which cannot be cut" might be all alike; or they might be variously different, inter se; and, on setting out in this inquiry it is necessary to know on which of these two assumptions we are to proceed. If the materialist is to be credited with any logical exactness, it is the former assumption alone that is admissible. When he asks for no more than matter for his purpose of constructing a universe, his demand is restricted to the essentials of matter, the characters which enter into its definition. It is from these alone that he pledges himself to deduce all the accessory characters which appear in one place though not in another, and which discriminate the several provinces of nature. It is in perfect 1 Prof. Huxley, ut suprà, p. 64. Vide infrà, Appendix, Note J. accordance with this, that the "atomists," says Lange, "attributed to matter only the simplest of the various properties of things - those, namely, which are indispensable for the presentation of a something in space and time, and their aim was to evolve from these alone the whole assemblage of phenomena." "They it was," he adds, "who gave the first perfectly clear notion of what we are to understand by matter as the basis of all phenomena. With the positing of this notion, materialism stood complete, as the first perfectly clear and consequent theory of all phenomena."1 If further corroboration of this statement were needed, it might be adduced from Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Evolution, already quoted:2" Evolution is a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity, to a definite coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations." And again: -"From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is that in which evolution essentially consists." In perfect consistency with these statements Mr. Spencer further 1 "Geschichte des Materialismus," i. pp. 8, 9. 2 Vide suprà, p. 27. |