Some Guesses by an Ignoramus. 67 
whether of things minute beyond the power of the microscope, or of things 
vast beyond the reach of the telescope, the spectroscope, or the camera, from 
the suppositious electron on one hand. to the mighty suns and the nebulous 
star drift of unbounded space on the other. It also seems to me that this 
certainty extends to all things visible or invisible, animate or inanimate, 
physical or non-physical, and that all are in the inescapable grasp of that 
law. If so, all are therefore equally within the comprehension and the de- 
sign of that supreme intelligence. It also seems to me that while our world 
is only a comparatively insignificant atom in an apparently boundless uni- 
verse, the evidence given us by the instruments devised by science shows that 
that universe is homogenous, and that the differences in its various members 
is a difference not due to differences in their composition or to laws by 
which they are governed, but to differences in the stages of their growth 
or development; that all of the things in that univer.e have always been, 
and always will be, including those things to which we give the names 
matter and force. As the scientist apparently feels justified in using 
his imagination by way of supplement to his knowledge, so my imagin- 
ation has included under the terms ‘force’ and “energy” other things 
than those which conform to the so-called law of the conservation of 
energy ;—such as gravitation, and life, with other possible and probable 
undiscovered, undifferentiated, or unnamed forces or modes of energy; 
that nature is only a name for that which lies back of all those things,— 
that supreme intelligence; that the so-called laws of nature are simply 
‘attributes of that supreme governing power or entity, and the so-called 
forces simply the methods by which that intelligence makes itself manifest. 
In my ignorance I am able to find in the physical universe only three 
ultimate and fundamental things, viz: the action of that supreme iutelli- 
gence of which I have spoken, matter or substance, and force or energy— 
force and energy meaning to me only different phases of the same thing. 
To me, matter and force are inseparable, and I cannot imagine one as exist- 
ing apart from the other. Science tells us of many elements, but to me 
they are all resolvable into one elementary substance,—the various so- 
called elements being due to the manner in which the electrons compos- 
ing them are combined. To me there is only one elementary force, all the 
various so-called forces being due to the manner in which that one ele- 
mentary force manifests itself under varying conditions. My imagination 
carries me further, and to me life seems to be nothing more than one of 
those forces,—nature’s organizing and con:tructive foree,—nature’s master 
builder ; that germs are its trestleboards on which it finds the perfect plans 
for the structures it is to build, whether that structure is intended to be a 
tree, an earthworm, or a man; that protoplasm and germs have not just 
happened, but that they are a part of the plan of that supreme intelligence ; 
that each germ embodies an idea of that supreme intelligence, and that in 
each of these germs life, the builder, finds every detail of the future tree. 
plant, flower, or animal. True, I have been told that in animal life, up to a 
certain stage in the development of the embryo, it is not possible for us 
to distinguish between the human embryo and that of other animals. While 
this may all be true, is it not also true that life never encounters any such 
difficulty? On the contrary, when life begins its work with a given germ, 
is it not plain that it knows exactly what the finished product is to be,— 
