RELATION OF THE FINITE TO THE INFINITE. 77 



direct motive power preexisted in the force of gravity, or in the elastic 

 property of the molecular structure of the spring. In bringing the 

 wheels together, and making all the adjustments, we create neither 

 force nor quality in separating them and breaking the connections, 

 we destroy nothing. The same is true of all mechanism, and indeed of 

 all organisms. Chemical atoms are endowed with definite, inflexible, 

 and indestructible properties that produce different effects only when 

 differently related or correlated. 



The difference between organic and inorganic conditions of exist- 

 ence is not a difference in the powers or properties of matter trace- 

 able to first causes, but to changed relations due to secondary causes ; 

 just as the movement of pieces upon the chess-board does not change 

 the number or the power of the pieces, but, from their changed rela- 

 tions to each other, arise new and highly-complicated effects, that are 

 perhaps never repeated in playing a million games. It is for this 

 reason that no two organisms are ever exact duplicates of each other, 

 nor is the individual ever twice in the same physical or intellectual 

 conditions. 



Now, is it not plain that, in the investigation of all the simple forces 

 of which we have the slightest knowledge, there is not one in which 

 we can find a comprehensible beginning? We trace them one by one 

 from highly-involved conditions, through the less and less involved, 

 until at last the simple force, divorced from all associated relations, is 

 lost in the azure blue of the infinite infinite in the space it may oc- 

 cupy infinite in its duration infinite in the diversity of effects that 

 may arise from association with other simple forces, and finite or com- 

 prehensible alone in the duration of these conditions. It is at just this 

 point we desire to draw the line between the knowable and the un- 

 knowable. All attempts to find the relation existing between first cause 

 and any sequence or effect must utterly fail, for, as we have already 

 seen, it is an effort of the mind to comprehend infinite conditions to 

 produce something from nothing. To say that God, in his creative 

 energy, was the first cause, is to say that all the conditions of creation 

 preexisted hi him, and, if all the conditions and possibilities of creation 

 preexisted in God, creation itself preexisted in. him, and consequently 

 had no beginning, for the conditions by which creation was alone made 

 possible, and which were its foundation-stones, were certainly first 

 causes, and, if God created them, he created himself, which is absurd. 



When we grant that the material universe contains in itself no 

 creative energy, and that all the manifold laws by which seemingly 

 blind atoms rise by intelligent coordination to organic conditions, and 

 thus to intellectual activities, have not created themselves, we have 

 exhausted the argument for materialism as a possible explanation of 

 First Cause. And now we appeal to an Infinite Intelligence, a spiritual 

 essence, superior to material conditions, and attempt to satisfy reason 

 by making the universe the sequence of a Sovereign Will ? But have 



