INTRODUCTION 



THE greatest questions which man can ask and attempt to 

 answer belong to the sphere of origins. We live in the 

 midst of perpetual motion and change, and see all things 

 flowing around us without ceasing. Are they as a river 

 proceeding from a source and running towards a goal? 

 Are they as a sea swaying to and fro, for ever to and fro ; 

 or as a whirlpool circling round and round, without begin- 

 ning or end 1 Have they existed from eternity as they 

 are now ; or have they assumed their present form by 

 chance aggregation, combination, and development; or 

 have they been built up out of eternal matter by an 

 eternal mind arranging, uniting, constructing ; or is matter 

 itself the work of mind ? Natural theology, arguing from 

 design, has hitherto only set itself to prove that the great 

 kosmos in the midst of which we find ourselves has not 

 existed from eternity as it now is, has not been formed by 

 chance, but has been arranged and built up by a mind of 

 immeasurable power. We propose to address ourselves 

 to the last question, and to show that matter is the crea- 

 tion of mind; that in its primal elements, however far 

 back we may have to go to find them, there are so many 

 signs of mind as to render it evident that they are the 

 product of an understanding that is infinite, of a hand 

 that is omnipotent. We must, in the first instance, deal 

 with the simplest forms of existence as at present known 



