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ing bodies. Abstracting from this, they permitted their; 

 atoms to fall eternally through empty space. Democritus 

 assumed that the larger atoms moved more rapidly than 

 the smaller ones, which they therefore could overtake, and 

 with which they could combine. Epicurus, holding that 

 empty space could offer no resistance to motion, ascribed 

 to all the atoms the same velocity; but he seems to have 

 overlooked the consequence that under such circumstances 

 the atoms could never combine. Lucretius cut the knot 

 by quitting the domain of physics altogether, and causing 

 the atoms to move together by a kind of volition. 



Was the instinct utterly at fault which caused Lucretius 

 thus to swerve from his own principles? Diminishing 

 gradually the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at. 

 length to one " primordial form;" but he does not say, so 

 far as I remember, how he supposes this form to have been 

 introduced. He quotes with satisfaction the words of a 

 celebrated author and divine who had "gradually learned to 

 see that it was just as noble a conception of the Deity to 

 believe He created a few original forms, capable of self- 

 development into other and needful forms, as to believe 

 He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids 

 caused by the action of his laws." What Mr. Darwin 

 thinks of this view of the introduction of life, I do not 

 know. But the anthropomorphism, which it seemed his 

 object to set aside, is as firmly associated with the creation 

 of a few forms as with the creation of a multitude. We 

 need clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses and 

 two only are possible. Either let us open our doors 

 freely to the conception of creative acts, or abandoning 

 them, let us radically change our notions of Matter. If 

 we look at matter as pictured by Democritus, and as de- 

 nned for generations in our scientific text-books, the 

 notion of conscious life coming out of it cannot be formed 

 by the mind. The argument placed in the mouth of 

 Bishop Butler suflices, in my opinion, to crush all such 

 materialism as this. Those, however, who framed these 

 definitions of matter were but partial students. They 

 were not biologists, but mathematicians, whose labors 

 referred only to such accidents and properties of matter 

 as could be expressed in their formulas. Their science was 

 mechanical science, not the science of life. With matter 

 in its wholeness they never dealt; and, denuded by their 



