212 APPENDIX. [No. XII. 



must . admit, will suffice to fill our minds with an amazement productive 

 of reverence, submission, and humility 



Conclusion. W^e live in a material world, and can only converse with 

 matter; everything we treat of is material. We can only use material 

 properties to effect material phenomena; and our very existence here 

 depends upon a series of material events taking place in our own bodies, 

 for if these events do not take place, other actions ensue which end in 

 decomposition. An event of definite energy we call a unit of time, and 

 the total of events, taking place in our own bodies in our present condition, 

 we term the period of life. Time itself, therefore, is a material phenomenon, 

 depending solely on material properties. 



But whilst man can only clearly understand material phenomena, and 

 use matter to give rise to material effects, and thus conduct his affairs, 

 yet he has the power, by virtue of an immateriality in his own constitu- 

 tion, to perceive indistinctly through a veil the existence of an Immaterial 

 to whom matter and all material phenomena owe existence. The attri- 

 butes of the Creator of matter are, indeed, in this world quite beyond 

 the comprehension of man's faculties ; and the attributes which man is 

 compelled to attach to the Almighty are but positive expressions for the 

 absence of the properties of matter, which are solely derived from His 

 Almighty will. 



Having completed our inquiries into the sources of physical science, 

 we have found that man has no conception of matter without the existence 

 of a Supreme Being, who endowed it with properties, i.e. caused it to be 

 matter. We have seen that no imponderable attached to matter gives it 

 its properties, but that they are evolved simply from the will of the 

 Almighty. That which gives to matter properties is the will of God, and 

 we have before mentioned that man can have no conception of matter 

 without that to which it owes its property. 



As we can form no idea of matter apart from its Creator, so in our 

 present state, living in a material world, and being ourselves partly imma- 

 terial, partly matter, we cannot form any clear conception of the Almighty 

 totally apart from His wprks. From natural science, man only knows God 

 as being the Creator and Maker of all material things ; but hereafter, 

 when man shall rise again and assume a higher condition, he shall under- 

 stand these glorious mysteries apart from all created matter. 



We have seen that all physical subjects depend on the existence of the 

 Supreme Being, the Creator of matter, from whose will matter is. We 

 have seen that matter is that which attracts; that particles of matter 

 under attraction give to masses of matter their properties; and that 

 this attracted matter, being acted upon by new attractions, produces all 

 physical effects. 



Physical science depends on matter, and its property, attraction ; and 

 the great problem for man to solve, when he desires to perform his various 

 operations, is comprised in the effect which attraction produces on at- 

 tracted matter. The object of this volume has been to contribute to the 

 solution of this problem, and to condense the foundations of human know- 

 ledge into so small a compass, that the reader from its perusal, by simply 

 having attraction and attracted matter, may be able, at will, to give rise to 

 all physical phenomena. 



As a summary of the sources of physical science, I have drawn up the 



J 



