THE THREE ENTITIES. J 



so little understood of men, that, according to rumour, the 

 Patent Office finds it necessary to employ a special clerk 

 to deal with persons who believe in perpetual motion. It 

 will readily be seen, then, that since energy may be trans- 

 formed from one form into another, since it may equally 

 well be transferred from one body to another, and since, 

 moreover, it cannot be created or destroyed, we have pre- 

 cisely the same grounds for believing in its existence as an 

 actual entity as we had for believing in the existence of 

 matter. It is proper for us to hold as reasonable the view 

 that energy is an existing " thing." Concerning the dictum 

 of current science, that it is impossible to create or destroy 

 it, we ought to make the same provision as we did with 

 matter, that while it may not be forever and forever in- 

 destructible and uncreatable, and while it may be even now 

 suffering annihilation, we have no control over it. The 

 doctrine of the conservation of energy is receiving some 

 hard knocks nowadays, and whether or not it is weaken- 

 ing will be for the future to determine. 



We have, thus, reduced the universe to three terms: 

 matter ether energy, and we ought now to consider 

 whether this triune conception may not be capable of a 

 deeper synthesis. We have all, I imagine, a deep-seated 

 conviction of the essential " oneness" of the universe, and 

 to justify it, we must assume, either that these three things 

 are after all but " forms" or phases of an underlying and 

 unknowable reality, or that, separate and distinct as they 

 appear, they are themselves One, in some mysterious way 

 altogether beyond the power of human reason to grasp. 



- THE SOfi 



ootJ., -r-# T*K$ } TVr? AKTt+- 

 LIFE ! 



