47 



the utmost skill of the chemist, have been ti'iecl in vain. 

 Tyndall tells us that " Loschmidt, Stoney, and Sir William 

 Thomson have sought to determine the sizes of the atoms, 

 or rather to fix the limits between which their sizes lie ; " * 

 but he tacitly admits that they failed. Their very existence, 

 then, is a hypothesis, — a hypothesis, too, which has no clear 

 logical connexion with any observed fact. The idea of an 

 atom is, as it seems to me, inconceivable, or, as Herbert 

 Spencer would say, " unthinkable." An atom, if the word 

 has a meaning at all as a scientific term, must mean an 

 ultimate indivisible particle of matter — a unit of matter. 

 Now, to conceive of a piece of matter, having necessarily, 

 because it is matter, length and breadth, and yet as being 

 indivisible, is, as I think, impossible. And if we adopt the 

 view of Faraday, that atoms are ^' centres of force," the diSi- 

 culty remains. A centre of force must be either material 

 or immaterial ; if material, the absurdity remains as before ; 

 if immaterial, then no aggregate of the immaterial could form 

 the material universe. Science is thus completely at fault 

 regarding these hypothetical atoms. 



And when we proceed to test this atomic theory in its 

 development, evolving worlds and systems, and organisms, 

 and animal life, difficulties accumulate at eveiy step. It is 

 held that atoms — whether eternal (that is, self -existent), or 

 "manufactured articles"; whether inert, or gifted with feelings 

 of love and hate; whether destitute of power, or possessing 

 inherent potency — have arranged themselves by chance 

 friction and spontaneous interaction throughout the infinite 

 past, into those forms of wondrous beauty and delicate and 

 complicated mechanism which we now see in every part of 

 the universe, and which are all guided by wise laws, and 

 adapted to wise ends. What is the scientific proof of this 

 theory ? There is none, and there can be none. No scientist 

 professes to have seen atoms building up worlds, or spon- 

 taneously evolving new forms. The very nature of the theory 

 places it beyond the range of Science, relegating it away to 

 the infinite past. And besides, the notion of matter arranging 

 itself spontaneously into systems governed by exact law, and 

 organisms exhibiting the most beautiful design, is not only 

 unsupported by scientific observation, but it is opposed to the 

 whole analogy of experience. Spontaneous action is, as 

 Huxley rightly says, action without a cause, which is un- 

 scientific and impossible. It is impossible to conceive of a 



* AMress, p. 26. 



