ON THE MATEKIALISM OF ATOMS AND FOKCES. 305 



moment the first principle and real quickener of my 

 thought, deeper than the molecular movements in the 

 cerebral atoms which Huxley regards as the ultimate 

 cause of consciousness,* but which are themselves moved 

 and animated by this first principle. In a wftrd, may 

 it not be the moving principle of thought, that which 

 prompts us to these high and searching inquiries respect- 

 ing itself at this moment, as it equally was the moving 

 principle of the homogeneous nebular gas millions of ages 

 ago ? And, indeed, we must all believe it so to be. It 

 is one and the same eternal substance which then was, 

 and now is, at the bottom of all things a substance, one, 

 eternal, infinite and unfathomable beyond its phenomenal 

 manifestations ; the secret sustainer and necessary ground 

 at once of the universe and of the human reason, and 

 whose withdrawal for a moment, if we dare make so 

 wild a supposition, would cause the frame of the universe 

 to disjoint, would produce the wild welter and hurly- 

 burly of the atoms both in the brain and in the cosmos, 

 and would make all things revert to the chaos and 

 ancient night from which the old mythologies derived 

 them. Indeed, the bare notion so shakes the reason in 

 trying to imagine it, as to prove that the final support 

 of the human reason and of the solid material universe 

 is one and the same the Infinite Substance of Spinoza, 

 the God in whom all mankind believe, and of whom the 

 theologians have ever been vainly endeavouring to 

 present us with sensible images. 



A state of chaos, whatever may have been the crude . 

 beliefs of men, there never was in the cosmos, nor ever 

 can be. The existence of God as the eternal support of 

 the universe, as the inmost nerve and essence of thought, 

 is our guarantee to the contrary. And this belief is 



* Life of Hume, p. 79. 



X 



