NATURE 



THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1875 



THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE 



The Unseen Universe j or, Physical Speculaiions on a 



Fuiure State. (London : Macmillan and Co., 1875.) 



THIS book, which rumour attributes to a co-partnery 

 of two distinguished physicists, will at least serve 

 to prove one thing, that scientific men are not necessarily 

 unbelievers, and that some scientific men accept frankly 

 and fully the whole of what is generally understood as 

 the scheme of Trinitarian Christianity, and find in it the 

 most adequate expression of their own physical specu- 

 lations. Whether their readers agree with or differ from 

 the authors, they cannot fail to recognise the extent of their 

 information and the freedom of their reasoning. There 

 is no attempt to make anything square with preconceived 

 theories, and although we doubt whether the writers 

 would have arrived at their conclusions without the 

 accepted scheme of orthodox Christianity to serve them 

 as a clue, it is equally clear that they rest them on what 

 they think adequate scientific evidence. 



The preliminary chapter states the fact of the all 

 but universal belief in, or aspiration after, Immortality. 

 It admits that that doctrine is inconsistent with the 

 doctrine of continuity as generally understood and 

 as applied solely to the visible universe. It accepts 

 and explains the principle of continuity in the fullest 

 sense, and it attempts to reconcile it, as thus apprehended, 

 with the doctrine of immortality. Incidentally — out of 

 the apparent waste of energy in space, and on other 

 indications chiefly teleological— it constructs a hypothesis 

 of an invisible universe, perhaps developed out of 

 another invisible universe, and so on ad itifitiitum. 

 It is another consequence of the theory that our natural 

 bodies are probably accompanied by a sort of invisible 

 framework or spiritual body, and that the phosphorus 

 and other substances of which the natural body is 

 built up are not really identical with these elements in 

 their ordinary condition of inorganic atoms, but are some- 

 how transubstantiated by the co-existence, along with 

 the mere chemical substance or with its chemical pro- 

 perties, of this invisible, imponderable, immaterial, accom- 

 panying essence, which derives a kind of vis vivida from 

 a connection with the unseen universe. The passage 

 from the visible universe to the invisible seems to be made 

 intelligible to the authors by the existence of the ether, a 

 substance into which energy is continually being passed, 

 and into which it is perpetually, and, so far as any obvious 

 or sensible effect is concerned, finally, absorbed. 



As a first postulate the authors assume the existence of 

 a Creator. Finite beings, creatures, are conditioned by 

 the laws of the universe, and it is in these conditions that 

 we must seek to discover its nature. The first pair of 

 subjects for human thought are matter and mind, and the 

 materialists tell us, that whereas mind or mental activity 

 never exists without being associated with some forms of 

 matter, we may perfectly conceive matter, as for instance 

 a block of wood or a bar of iron, existing without intelli- 

 gence. Is mind then the dependant— is there nothing in 

 matter which serves as the vehicle of intelligence different 

 from all other matter ? The authors answer that we have 

 Vol. XII. — No. 290 



no right to assume that the brain consists of particles of 

 phosphorus or carbon such as we know these substances 

 chemically, that we cannot say that there may not be 

 something superadded to their chemical and physical 

 qualities. They dwell upon another fact — the fact that 

 individual consciousness returns after sleep or trance ; a 

 fact inferring some continuous existence. The assump- 

 tions of the materialist are less inevitable than he supposes. 

 Turning to mind, finite conditioned intelligence, the 

 authors ask, what is essential to it ? It must have some 

 organ by which it can have a hold upon the past, and 

 such a frame and such a universe as supply the means of 

 activity in the present. Outside they find physical laws, 

 and they look on the principle of continuity as something 

 like a physical axiom. By this principle we are compelled 

 to believe that the Supreme Governor of the Universe 

 will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. It is 

 in the nature of man, certainly in the nature of scientific 

 man, to carry the explanation of everything back ad 

 infinitum, and to refuse perpetually to grant what is per- 

 petually demanded of him, that he has arrived at the 

 inexplicable and unconditioned. On this principle scien- 

 tific men have supposed themselves to prove that the 

 physical universe must one day become mere dead matter. 

 The authors consider that this is a monstrous supposition, 

 although they grant that the visible, or by-sense-perceiv- 

 able universe, must in transformable energy, and probably 

 in matter, come to an end. They think that the principle 

 of continuity itself demands a continuance of the universe, 

 and they are driven to believe in something beyond that 

 which is visible as the only means of explaining how this 

 system of things can endure in the future, or can have 

 endured for ever in the past. They see a visible universe, 

 finite in extent and finite in duration, beyond which, o 

 both sides stretching infinitely forward and infinitely 

 backward, there is an invisible, its forerunner and its 

 continuation. It is natural to infer that these two invisi- 

 bles must meet across the existing finite visible universe. 

 As we are driven to admit the invisible in the past and in 

 the future, there must be an invisible framework of things 

 accompanying us in the present. 



What then is this present visible universe ; and can we 

 point to sure signs of this invisible substance which 

 accompanies what may prove after all to be the mere 

 shadow of things ? Matter has two qualities. The first is 

 that it is indestructible ; the second, that the senses of 

 all men alike point to the same quantity, quality, and col- 

 location of it. Our practical working certainty of ihe 

 existence of matter means (i) that it offers resistance to 

 our imagination and our will ; and (2) that it offers abso- 

 lute resistance to all attempts to change its quantity. 

 Certain other things — notably energy — are in the same 

 sense conserved, and if we recognise the transmutability 

 of energy of motion into energy of position, we may say 

 that energy is equally indestructible with matter itself. 

 But energy is undergoing a perpetual self-degradation. 

 All other forms of energy are slowly passing into invisible 

 heat motions, and when the heat of the universe has 

 ultimately been equalised, as it must be, all possibility of 

 physical action or of work will have departed. Mecha- 

 nical effort cannot longer be obtained from it. The per- 

 fect heat-engine only converts a portion of the heat into 

 work ; the rest is lost for ever as an available source of 



