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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



also to lend its aid to the propagation of 

 scientific atlieism, the sooner we know it 

 the better. 



" The interests of truth are paramount ; 

 and that publication is not trustworthy which 

 perverts history in the interest of Eomanism, 

 or science in the interest of atheism." 



The Catholic Peview, which was 

 probably aware how much terror there 

 was in the " No popery " alarm, and 

 ought to have learned a little caution, 

 joins the Christian at Work in getting 

 up the new scare, and, after making 

 the same quotation from our article, 

 observes : "In other words, Prof. You- 

 mans is allowed, in a work intended for 

 education and general uses, to broach 

 the fundamental heresy that there is 

 no personal God." As an indication of 

 liovv far Catholics and Protestants are 

 animated by the same spirit, we may 

 note that, when the writers of tliese 

 articles had been rebuked for their 

 course by other newspapers, they both 

 returned to the subject, and repeated 

 the charges in subsequent issues. 



Now, of this formidable indictment 

 we have only to say that it is entirely 

 trumped up, and is without the shadow 

 of a foundation in fact. In preparing 

 an article for the Cyclopedia, on the 

 " Correlation of Forces," we first gave a 

 brief sketch of the investigations that 

 had been made during the past centu- 

 ry, and which have brought the whole 

 scientific world to the comparatively 

 new conclusion that, although tlje dif- 

 ferent forms of force are convertible, 

 force, or energy itself, is indestructible. 

 After this preliminary statement of the 

 results of experimental investigation, 

 we said, " Therefore^ it is now regarded 

 as a fundamental truth of physical 

 science, and a fundamental law of Na- 

 ture, that force, like matter, is never 

 created or destroyed." The proposition 

 is stated as an inference, as an induc- 

 tion from observations, as a result of 

 experimental inquiry into the physical 

 processes of Nature, and as a pure prin- 

 ciple of science. We were not discuss- 



ing the subject of matter, but of force, 

 and what we declared in regard to 

 force we assumed in regard to matter 

 that, so far as science knows, it is never 

 eitiier created or destroyed. We did 

 not say that matter is eternal; we did 

 not say that matter never was created, 

 for these are questions beyond the lim- 

 its of science. We avoided all theo- 

 logical implications, and did not go a 

 hair's-breadth beyond the strict induc- 

 tive conclusion that in the course of 

 Nature there is no evidence of its cre- 

 ation or destruction. For us there is 

 only one question : Was the statement 

 true? That matter "is never created or 

 destroyed," has been established "as a 

 fundamental truth of physical science 

 and a fundamental law of Nature " for 

 more than a hundred years, or ever since 

 the science of chemistry was founded. 

 Every fact known to chemists or phys- 

 icists confirms it, and not a solitary fact 

 casts even the slightest doubt upon it. 

 There cannot be shown a particle of evi- 

 dence within the whole sphere of phys- 

 ical science that a single atom of matter 

 is ever either created or destroyed. The 

 propositicm, although for thousands of 

 years it was not believed, is now the 

 corner-stone of all science. If the 

 statement that matter is indestructible 

 be not a truth of physical science, then 

 there are no truths of physical science; 

 if it be not a fundamental law of Na- 

 ture, then there are no fundamental 

 laws of Nature. The doctrine which 

 we laid down has been held as a dem- 

 onstration in the whole scientific world, 

 and has become elementary in all our 

 text-books, for generations. 



But, for stating it in the American 

 Cyclopedia, that work is charged with 

 being a perverter of science, radical- 

 ly antichristian, and a propagator of 

 atheism. Now, let the reader remem- 

 ber that we are not the parties that 

 have raised this question of atheism. 

 We neither afiirmed atheism, nor insin- 

 uated it, nor implied it. We strictly 

 avoided a mode of statement which 



