9 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Sir Humphry Davy led wandering lecturers and all sorts of sciolists 

 to affirm that they could explain all things, matter and mind itself, by 

 electricity. So, in these days, development, having furnished a key to 

 open so many of the secrets of Nature, has led some to imagine that 

 it can solve all the mysteries of the universe. Some of us may be 

 inclined to admit, and to use for scientific purposes, the doctrine of 

 development, and yet be prepared to deny that it can explain every- 

 thing. The fact is, it overlooks a great many more things than 

 it notices. There are signs of a reaction among scientific men against 

 its extreme positions ; and it is the work of the age now present to 

 show how much development can do, and how much it cannot do. 

 Even Darwin is obliged to call in a few germs created by God, and a 

 pangenesis in order to account for development. Herbert Spencer 

 acknowledges a great Unknown behind visible phenomena. Huxley 

 recommends a worship chiefly " of the silent sort." Religion comes 

 to them and says, " Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship him de- 

 clare I unto you." 



In the common apprehension of those who hold the development 

 hypothesis, all that is necessary to account for the world in its pres- 

 ent state is to suppose that millions of years ago there appeared no 

 one can tell how a nebulous mass with an inconceivably high tem- 

 perature, but losing its heat and ready to condense ; that in the long 

 lapse of time it took the shape of planets, satellites, and sun ; and that 

 on one of these planets that on which we dwell it formed into 

 plants, animals, and finally man, all by its own power, according to 

 natural law, or, rather, the necessity of things, without it being neces- 

 sary to call in a God or a guiding providence, or to siippose that there 

 has been a plan in a designing mind. All the defenders of the theory 

 do not state this in express words, but it is the impression left by 

 their expositions, though some of them, such as Herbert Spencer and 

 Tyndall, would save themselves from the blank consequences by call- 

 ing in an unknown and unknowable power beyond the visible phe- 

 nomena, or by appealing to some religious feelings supposed to be 

 deep in our nature, but which the theory would soon undermine, as 

 being, in fact, unjustifiable and unreasonable. This is the view that 

 I mean to meet. In examining this hypothesis there are some things 

 which I am willing to admit as being established truths : 



1. I hold the doctrine of the Conservation of Force that is, that 

 the sum of energy, real and potential, in the universe is always one 

 and the same, and cannot be increased or diminished by human or 

 mundane action. I was prepared for this doctrine when it was an- 

 nounced by Mayer, of Heilbronn, and by Joule, of Manchester, and 

 expounded by Grove, of London. It seemed to me to follow from the 

 doctrine which I had laid down in my first work " The Method of 

 Divine Government " published twenty-six years ago : as to the ma- 

 terial universe being composed of substances with properties or pow- 



