ON MATTER AND FORCE. 41 



religious men that ever lived. Among his 

 manuscripts, that have been entrusted to me 

 since his death, I have found this passage : 

 " But, though the natural works of God can 

 never by any possibility come into contradiction 

 with the higher things which belong to our 

 future existence, and must, with everything 

 concerning Him, ever glorify Him, still I do 

 not think it at all necessary to tie the study of 

 the natural sciences and of religion together." 



It appears, from what I have said in my 

 first lecture, that a certain fixed direction of 

 development of knowledge is found to obtain 

 in our ideas of the union of matter and force 

 in the sciences from which the idea of life is 

 excluded. 



Whether we judge from the general history 

 of science, or from the history of the knowledge 

 of individual minds, the same succession of ideas 

 marks the advance which is gradually being made. 



First, the ideas of matter and force are con- 

 sidered to be completely separable ; secondly, 

 they are held to be incompletely separable; 

 and, lastly, these ideas are found to be com- 

 pletely inseparable the one from the other. 



When all idea of life is excluded, the present 



