RESULTS AND LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 435 



original nebulous matter, although all the particles of 

 matter should obey the one law of gravity. 



Lucretius tells us how in the original rain of atoms 

 some of these little bodies diverged from the rectilineal 

 direction, and coming into contact with other atoms gave 

 rise to the various combinations of substances and phe- 

 nomena which exist. He omitted, indeed, to tell us whence 

 the atoms came, or by what force some of them were 

 caused to diverge, but surely these omissions involve 

 the whole question. I accept the Lucretian conception 

 of creation when properly supplemented. Every atom 

 which existed in any point of space must have existed 

 there previously, or must have been created there by a 

 previously existing Power. When placed there it must 

 have had a definite mass and a definite energy, kinetic 

 or potential as regards other existing atoms. Now, as 

 before remarked, an unlimited number of atoms can be 

 placed in unlimited space in an entirely unlimited number 

 of modes of distribution. Out of infinitely infinite choices 

 which were open to the Creator, that one choice must 

 have been made which has yielded the universe as it 

 now exists. 



It would indeed be a mistake to suppose that the law 

 of gravity, when it holds true, is no restriction in the dis- 

 tribution of force. That law is a geometrical law, and it 

 would in many cases be mathematically impossible, as far 

 as we can see, that the force of gravity acting on one 

 particle should be small while that on a neighbouring 

 particle was great. We cannot conceive that even Omni- 

 potent Power should make the angles of a triangle less 

 or greater than two right angles. The primary laws of 

 thought and the fundamental notions of the mathemati- 

 cal sciences do not seem to us to admit of any alter- 

 ation. Into the metaphysical origin and meaning of the 

 apparent necessity attaching to such laws I have not 



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