DIVISIBILITY OF MATTER FACTS BEYOND PHYSICS. 417 



Augustus, the product would fill six pages of this work ; 

 and if extended in a single line of figures as large as our 

 type would form a sum eighteen yards long : carried back 

 to the founding of the Chinese Empire, according to some 

 historians, it would fill thirteen of our pages, and give a 

 single line of figures thirty-nine yards long, as any of 

 our readers may satisfy himself by multiplying the first 

 ten millions by ten millions for the succeeding year, and 

 so on, and observing that each year adds seven ciphers to 

 the product. He has therefore merely to take the number 

 of years and add seven ciphers for each. And yet this 

 extraordinary result is probably as far within the mark as 

 it may at first sight appear hyperbolical and excessive, 

 for we have not merely assumed, within our limits, that 

 the cod milt contains only ten millions, instead of more 

 nearly eight or ten hundred millions, but that each fish 

 reproduces its species only once a year, and once in a life- 

 time. At the same time it is not essential to our calcula- 

 tion, or its object, that these animals do not all reach full 

 development and maturity ; it is enough for what we are 

 about to observe on the subject that they exist even for 

 only an instant at any stage of their vitality. Now we do 

 not state this for the purpose of illustrating the infinitesi- 

 mal divisibility of matter, nor the extent of its practicable 

 divisibility in the hands of its great Maker and Master ; 

 for while we freely and reverently acknowledge God's per- 

 fectly illimitable omnipotence in this as in all directions, 

 we do not believe that He has chosen to subdivide matter to 

 this degree, and we venture to think that various chemical 

 facts are inconsistent with such a hypothesis. We think, 

 on the contrary, that we are on the verge of a new dis- 

 covery, and a discovery with which we cannot hope to 

 laurel ourselves, for it will only, we fear, reveal to us how 

 little we know how little of palpable and unchallengeable 

 fact and reality we ever here can hope to know. In editing 



