Scientific Sophisms, 159 



You postulate "Matter." But in so doing 

 you are hypothecating a substance which before 

 the " First Beginning " had not begun to be. 

 How did it originate ? Unable to answer that 

 question, you make another assumption. You 

 postulate "eternity" for that "matter" of whose 

 origin you can give no account. But this ac- 

 cumulation of postulates will not help you. 

 What is this matter which impelled by the 

 exigencies of Agnostic Evolution you assume 

 to have been self-originated ? Make its essence 

 what you will extension, with Descartes ; or 

 palpableness, with Fechner Matter is always, 

 and is manifestly, the local lodgment, the objec- 

 tive manifestation, of Power. " The withered 

 leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it 

 and around it, though working in inverse order ; 

 else how could it rot?" 1 Matter, Force, Motion, 

 are not unknown to Science ; but of matter self- 

 originated and self-sustained, of matter self- 

 existent and therefore eternal ; of self-originated 

 force, or self-originated motion ; of all these 

 throughout the realm of the inorganic world, 

 Science knows nothing. 



When therefore we have granted "the eternity 

 of matter," the theory of Evolution is as far as 



1 Carlyle : " Sartor Resartus," book i. chap. xi. p. 43. 



