20 INTRODUCTION. 



Assuming the position we have laid 

 down, in the commencement of our 

 treatise, to be correct, that the space 

 occupied by the material universe has, 

 from the creation, been filled with pre- 

 cisely the same materials as at present, 

 that these materials existed in the 

 form of gases, and were kept in that 

 state by caloric, which, with electricity, 

 existed in a latent or passive state, until 

 the Creator saw fit to arrange them in 

 the order which enabled them to unite, 

 or be condensed in masses, and to be 

 governed thereafter by natural laws 

 which He had impressed upon them, 

 it will need little aid from the imagi- 

 nation to conceive, that, should the 

 Almighty, at any time, annul those laws 

 by which the particles of matter had 

 been attracted towards each other, and 



