CHAP. XIL] "MANUFACTURED ARTICLES/' 393 



11 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge, 

 Nov. 1876. 



MY LORD BISHOP The comparison of atoms or of mole- 

 cules to " manufactured articles," was originally made by Sir 

 J. F. D. Herschel in his "Preliminary Discourse on the 

 Study of Natural Philosophy," Art. 28, p. 38 (ed. 1851, 

 Longmans). 



I send you by book post several papers in which I have 

 directed attention to certain kinds of equality among all 

 molecules of the same substance, and to the bearing of this 

 fact on speculations as to their origin. 



The comparison to " manufactured articles " was criticised 

 (I think in a letter to Nature) by Mr. C. J. Monro [Nature, 

 x. 481, 15th October 18*74], and the latter part of the 

 Encyc. Brit., Article "Atom," is intended to meet this criti- 

 cism, which points out that in some cases the uniformity 

 among manufactured articles is evidence of want of power in 

 the manufacturer to adapt each article to its special use. 



What I thought of was not so much that uniformity of 

 result which is due to uniformity in the process of for- 

 mation, as a uniformity intended and accomplished by the 

 same wisdom and power of which uniformity, accuracy, 

 symmetry, consistency, and continuity of plan are as im- 

 portant attributes as the contrivance of the special utility 

 of each individual thing. 



With respect to your second question, there is a state- 

 ment printed in most commentaries that the fact of light 

 being created before the sun is in striking agreement with 

 the last results of science (I quote from memory). 



I have often wished to ascertain the date of the original 

 appearance of this statement, as this would be the only 

 way of finding what " last result of science " it referred to. 

 It is certainly older than the time when any notions of the 

 undulatory theory became prevalent among men of science 

 or commentators. 



If it were necessary to provide an interpretation of the 

 text in accordance with the science of 1876 (which may 

 not agree with that of 1896), it would be very tempting to 



