294 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



remoter systems as to form into separate worlds, and 

 to break off into such immense and accurately ordered 

 marches, without some controlling principle of intelli- 

 gence, not contained in the individual atoms, to direct their 

 movement. Nor does modern chemistry or the doctrine 

 of natural selection applied to the molecules really make 

 the revived atomism of Democritus more credible or 

 intelligible in our day than Cicero found it in his. For, 

 besides that the action of chemical affinity at first, and 

 of natural selection afterwards, in producing and con- 

 tinuing life, is a point in dispute, or, more strictly 

 speaking, is not yet proved, still, even were it other- 

 wise, the mind would" never rest satisfied with the ex- 

 planation that matter alone produced life and thought, 

 not even if it were granted that all matter was, as 

 Haeckel affirms, in a certain sense alive. The cause 

 assigned is not adequate to the total series of unlike and 

 marvellous effects. The reply of Cicero still holds good : 

 It is more credible that the letters composing the Iliad 

 should have come into their proper places by chance, 

 than the atoms should have produced the Cosmos without 

 a marshalling agency. To assign a conscious mind and 

 purpose resembling the human may be and is an im- 

 perfect explanation ; but it is, we are assured, by much 

 the lesser error of the two. It is more philosophical to 

 assign the highest than the lowest known cause as the 

 first principle of things, even though we know that the 

 highest is inadequate. 



Nor will the modern and more refined materialism, 

 which starts from the notion of force instead of matter, 

 and which builds itself mainly on the new doctrine of 

 the conservation of energy, be found in the end more 

 satisfactory to our minds or more philosophical. For, 

 even granting the proof of this law in all its generality, 



