15 
rate of 6055 feet per second, a higher velocity than that of the 
swiftest cannot ball, and it increases with every rise of temperature. 
Well it necessarily follows that these gaseous molecules, darting 
about with this inconceivable velocity, must be constantly striking 
against each other and darting off in new directions. Clerk Max- 
well has been at the trouble of calculating how often this occurs, 
and he tells us that at ordinary temperature and pressure each 
particle in a mass of hydrogen makes on an average 17,700,000,000 
collisions in every second. We listen to these numbers, or we read 
them, and generally unquestioningly pass over them; what if you 
stay to think of them? Do you find it a simple thing to grasp the 
idea of 17,700 million separate and distinct collisions every second 
of time? Or does this scientific statement, like many religious 
truths wear the aspect of the mysterious and the improbable? It 
maybe true; Iam not arguing against it; but taking its truth 
for granted no miracle: ever yet recorded wears such an air of 
improbability. 
These molecules are supposed to have been thus madly rushing 
and clashing together from all eternity; for notice, though we 
deserve pity for believing in an Hternal God, we are expected to 
believe in the eternity of Matter and-Force. You would ask, 
perhaps, what has been the result of this interaction of atoms and 
molecules from all eternity? The answer given to you is—the 
present state of affairs, the ‘‘ Nature of Things ;”— our Universe 
with its magnificently marshalled suns and planets, and the laws 
_ by which they act ;—our Earth with all its beneficial arrangements 
for its inhabitants ; the adaptation of man, bird, and beast, insect 
and plant, each to its surroundings, and all to each other; the 
structure of man himself, physical and psychical ;—these all are 
the results we are told of the ‘‘ fortuitous concourse of atoms.’’ 
“T saw the flaring atom-streams 
And torrents of the myriad universe, 
Ruining along the illimitable inane, 
Fly on to clash together again, and make 
Another and another frame of things 
For ever.’ '(e) 
There has been no Mind at all at work asa controlling power, 
and whatever mind does exist is a production of the unguided 
motions of these blind indestructible material particles. We have 
laws, but there has been no law-giver ; ‘‘ Atoms, individually dead, 
without sensation and intelligence, get up of themselves, run to- 
gether, form all actual and imaginable combinations, as if under a 
drill master, but without a drill master. Each one by itself is 
dead; yet, together they live. When apart they are without 
sensation, possess no intelligence; but collectively they possess 
(e) Tennyson’s “ Lucretius.” 
