1864. | Atheism and Science. 549 
definite time, is as yet unknown to us,” but it is probable that the 
investigations of science will give us a clue to this mystery.* 
It may be evidence of great obtuseness on our part, but we confess 
that the author travels too fast for us, for we cannot understand how, 
if matter be eternal, and motion, which is inseparably united to it, be 
eternal also, matter can ever have begun to move; and how it is that 
the “law” of attraction was not always at work. According to the 
author’s views, “matter and force” must have had the power within 
themselves to commence a series of operations which have resulted 
in the formation of the worlds, and when they made up their mind 
to start, they did so; but we should be sorry to press even this mode- 
rate approach to a theological creed, because “we should approach to 
pantheistic ideas,’ which the author places in the same category with 
the vain fancies of believers in a Deity. ¢ 
However, granted that eternal matter with its immanent eternal 
forces, and controlled by the law of attraction, did “begin” to bestir 
itself, what followed? The inorganic world developed itself, and all 
went on smoothly until it was necessary for nature’s ends (by the 
way, nature has no ends, “it is an end in itself”—for the develop- 
ment of matter, then) that organic life should appear. How was this 
brought about? Well, when the “ fiery glohe” was cooled down, and 
the vapours had settled upon the Earth “ with the appearance of water, 
and as soon as the temperature permitted it, organic life developed 
itself.” 
And why not? ‘Where air, heat, and moisture combine, there 
appears sometimes in a few moments an innumerable world of sin- 
gularly-shaped animals, which we term infusoria.”{ This is what is 
called ‘spontaneous generation,” which “ signifies the production of 
organic beings without previously existing homogeneous parents or 
germs, merely by the accidental or necessary concurrence of inorganic 
elements and natural forces,” &e.§ 
And now we have presented to us evidences not only of the 
author's candid and impartial mode ‘of inquiry, but also of the pro- 
fundity of his research, and of the originality of his views. 
“ Generatio equivoca” is not yet quite a settled question ; Pouchet 
and Pasteur, Wyman, Jolly, Musset, and a crowd of investigators are 
still actively engaged upon the inquiry, but sufficient is ascertained to 
satisfy the author that this kind of generation “does not exactly 
possess a scientific basis,” and that “ omne vivum ex ovo” is becoming 
the order of the day. Let not this crude, unsettled state of science, 
however, afford any encouragement to believers in a Deity and a crea- 
tion. “ We might answer these believers, that the germs of all beings 
had from all eternity existed in universal space, or in the chaotic 
vapours from which the Earth was formed ; and these germs, deposited 
upon the Earth, have there and then become developed, according to 
external necessary conditions. The facts of these successive organic 
generations would thus be sufliciently explained.” || 
There, reader, that is a theory founded upon “a scientific basis.” 
Se SE ‘Tube Sil. t P. 66. § P. 69. 1 P. 71. 
