46 



tlieory^ the theory vanishes " like the baseless fabric of a 

 vision/' The most careful study of matter^ whether we regard 

 it in its supposed atomic elements^ or in its grand combinations 

 governed by wondrous laws, or in its beautiful and complex 

 organisms, leads inevitably to the conclusion that there is a 

 Power and a Wisdom infinite above and beyond it. "^ We 

 cannot/' says Herbert Spencer, " think at all about the im- 

 pressions which the external world produces on us without 

 thinking of them as caused, and we cannot carry out an inquiry 

 concerning their causation without inevitably committing 

 ourselves to the hypothesis of a First Cause/'* So much, then, 

 for the teaching of Science as to the eternity of matter, and 

 the formation of the material universe. 



But we return for a moment to this atomic theory. Demo- 

 critus, following Leucippus, held that atoms were originally 

 scattered throughout empty space, and that they combined in 

 obedience to mechanical laws. Empedocles, a Sicilian philo- 

 sopher of the same age, could not believe this possible, and 

 suggested that the atoms possessed original and elementary 

 powers or sensations of love and hate, and that influenced by 

 these they combined or separated. Lucretius conceived the 

 atoms falling eternally through space, and their interaction 

 throughout infinite time forming the worlds. It was a truly 

 poetic conception, worthy of its author. Clerk Maxwell 

 supposed the atoms to have been created, or, as Herschel 

 says, '' manufactured articles," and endowed with certain 

 powers, under the guidance of which they gradually evolved 

 those complex forms now presented to the eye of the student 

 of nature. Tyndall, again, though he speaks with considerable 

 hesitation, as if groping his way through the cloud-land of 

 hypothesis, suggests that the atoms may possess some inherent 

 energy or life ; and hence he professes to discern in *' molecular 

 force the agency by which both plants and animals are built 

 up,''t though he does not tell us whence this molecular force 

 has come ; indeed, he intimates that it is '' wholly ultra- 

 experiential." 



I do not profess to reconcile these discordant theories, I 

 leave the task to scientists ; and I venture to think they will 

 find it no easy one. My sole object is to submit them, one 

 and all, to the test of scientific proof. As to atoms themselves, 

 they have never been absolutely discovered. Scientists have 

 searched for them, the higliest powers of the microscope, and 



First Principles, p. 37. f Address, p. 52. 



