4 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



being unintelligent, it can have no causative power, and can produce 

 no change, for all changes in matter must be, by its motion, massive 

 or atomic, and matter cannot move itself. 



Even if it could be imbued with motive power, it could have no 

 inducement, no tendency, to move in one direction rather than another ; 

 and a tendency which is equal in all directions is no tendency in any 

 direction. If all matter were at this moment quiescent, even the ma- 

 terialists will not assert that it could of itself begin to move. 



It may, however, be urged that both the arguments thus drawn 

 from the difficulty of conceiving the creation of matter, and the neces- 

 sity of motion to its causal power, may be met by the hypothesis that 

 matter was not created, but has existed through a past eternity, and 

 that its original condition was that of motion, and that there is no 

 more difficulty in conceiving this than in conceiving that intelligence, 

 with its activities, has had no beginning. 



But, granting that matter has always existed, and originally had 

 motion, and consequent power, still, if the tendency is to expend and 

 exhaust this power in producing effects, by collision or otherwise, or, 

 admitting the conservation of force, if its tendency is to become mere- 

 ly potential, then the force which it originally had, in virtue of being 

 in motion, must, in the infinite period of its existence, have been either 

 wholly exhausted or reduced to an infinitesimal, requiring the inter- 

 vention of some active power to again give it any practical force. 



But whether matter, supposing it to exist, can of itself, by means 

 of its motion, be an independent power or force, still depends on an- 

 other question, viz., Is the tendency of a body in motion, when the 

 power which put it in motion is withdrawn, to continue to move, or to 

 stop ? In other words, is the application of extrinsic power required 

 to keep it in motion, or is such application required to stop it ? Hav- 

 ing no power to move itself when once at rest, it could have no power 

 to act, but coidd only be acted upon, and, if it has inertia, it would 

 be a means of exhausting other force. 



If when once in motion its tendency is to continue in motion, then 

 it could be used as an instrument by which intelligent power, putting 

 it in motion, could extend the effects of its own action in time and space. 



If the tendency is to stop, then it could have no power or force, in 

 virtue of being in motion, and could not even be a means of extending 

 the effects of the action of other powers. 



I have heretofore confessed my inability to solve this question as 

 to the tendency of a moving body to continue its motion, or to stop 

 when the motive power is withdrawn. I have not, perhaps, been able 

 even to disentangle it from the empirical meshes in which it has be- 

 come involved, and which, in my view, do not and cannot furnish any 

 clew to its solution ; but, until this point is settled, I do not see how 

 matter, though in motion, can properly be regarded as a force, or 

 even as a conserver of force imparted to it by some other power. 



