The Cause of Life and Motion 7 



tion, all bodies or masses composed of atoms will 

 be considered exclusively as material. 



Although the writer has felt constrained to use 

 the term in its conventional sense, as a matter of 

 fact, it will be found that he is more material in 

 his views than the most confirmed materialist, 

 since he does not admit the possibility of the 

 existence of any life or movement whatever with- 

 out a direct and systematic cause, whereas, curious 

 as it may seem, scientists, as a rule, refer the 

 cause of all life and movement to imaginary 

 influences, either derived from existing anomalous 

 properties or from dormant qualities infused in 

 matter at some remote period of the past. In 

 other words, they teach that a body of matter has 

 various unexplainable, not to say inconsistent quali- 

 ties within it, which always act voluntarily and 

 exact under certain conditions. 



If a ball is thrown up into the air, it will stop at 

 some certain point, dependent upon the quantity of 

 projectile force given and the attraction of gravity; it 

 will then descend, and upon reaching the earth it will 

 rebound, apparently, by reason of its inherent elas- 

 ticity; again it will stop and descend, and thus it 

 will go on with its richochet movements, until after a 

 series of systematic decrements it is brought to a stop 

 by the force of gravity. 



From whence does this inert body of matter 

 get its apparent self-sustained and systematic ac- 

 tion ? We are told that it is derived in art, from cer-. 



UNIVERSITY 



