418 ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA OF NATUBAL MAGIC. 



Joyce's Scientific Dialogues for Mr. Tegg, the present 

 writer ventured, at p. 324 of that work, to say that, while 

 it was impossible to conceive of any body or particle of 

 matter so small as not to have two surfaces, the one of 

 which must be capable of physical separation from the 

 other, had we means sufficiently fine to accomplish the 

 separation, " yet there is reason to believe that the sub- 

 division of matter stops short of this infinitesimal redu- 

 cibility of parts in a definite and ultimate molecular form, 

 very minute indeed, but beyond which material elements 

 never are divided, though it is of course impossible to 

 conceive that these molecules or atoms of matter are in- 

 capable of being divided still further had we the means ; 

 only if further divided they would cease to be molecules, 

 and would only be fragments of molecules. Chemistry, 

 from the proportions in which different elements chemi- 

 cally combine, has long pointed to, and now absolutely 

 demands, this solution of the structure of matter." The 

 view above stated we find no good ground for qualifying 

 here, even in the presence of the extraordinary fact as to 

 reproduction in the codfish which has just been set forth, 

 and which is greatly exceeded in the reproductive history 

 of many other animals and in many plants. What we 

 maintain is, that the subdivision we have set forth in this 

 case of animated nature is far beyond the molecular, and 

 very, very far beyond the possible organic subdivision of 

 matter, taking nature as it is that the hundredth pro- 

 geny or descendant of a codfish has, consequently, no phy- 

 sical or organic existence whatever in its hundredth 

 ancestor or progenitor, and that its connection with its 

 ancestor during the earlier stages of that ancestor's exist- 

 ence and development is not and cannot be a physical one. 

 We do not at the same time deny that the connection 

 exists, or existed at that stage ; on the contrary, we affirm 

 that it did then exist, and was in the parent as essentially 



