THE NATURE OF THE EXISTENCE OF MATTER. 269" 



out arousing a vestige of the religious idea. In personal existence is involved the 

 question whether or not the vastly complex bodily organism is the first or only 

 the outer shell. We cannot but admit that the body is vastly more mysterious 

 since science took it up. There is a class of philosophers who think it will 

 simplify matters to consider the individual as a material substance with two sets 

 of properties. If by a material substance is meant a combination of elements 

 there is no such material in existence having the qualities of mind; if it means 

 the whole being, the statement amounts to nothing. We must admit there is 

 something' more, and that is life. Nutrition, reproduction, sensation and volun- 

 tary motion are its functions, the last two being restricted to animal life. Herbert 

 Spencer says life is " the continuous adjustment of internal and external rela- 

 tions," but that is very vague and only touches the surface, I think myself that 

 life has the same relation to organism that force has to matter. It is some energy, 

 whether a combination of physical energies, or the same but correlated only with 

 organization. It is all very well to find fault with calling the living organization 

 '■'■ a machine," but a machine has to be made by some one and for a purpose, and 

 there is an enormous lot of theism in the idea. Who ever heard of a machine 

 made by nobody for nothing in particular ? What is the use in talking about 

 protoplasm as the basis of life when in point of fact protoplasm depends on life 

 as its basis ? All the white of an egg is protoplasm, but life is in the embryo cell. 

 Protoplasm may go to make feathers and flesh and tissue, and yet the life that 

 constitutes the chick may be elsewhere. Going further, science fails to correlate 

 the power of the human will with any physical force. It is an energy that ope- 

 rates only on living organs and through them on other things. Then comes the 

 question, are we the orig nators of the world, or did it produce us, or is there a 

 great third Being ? If an atom is a vortex, as they say, what is it a vortex of ? 

 We talk very learnedly of laws of nature, but they are but the expressions of the 

 controlled motion of things. Behind them lies an insoluble mystery. 



In conclusion Mr. Dawson discussed the three theories of Herbert Spencer 

 as to the origin of things, "self-existing," or "self-created," or "created by 

 external agency," and raised a laugh by saying that the possibility of creation by 

 an agency within had never occurred to Mr. Spencer. Mr. Dawson's deduction 

 was that science is not inconsistent with the view of a superhuman power explain- 

 ing the origin, design and continuance of things. — Philadelphia Times. 



THE NATURE OF THE EXISTENCE OF MATTER. 



BY E. R. KNOWLES. 



Philosophers are now obliged to refer all the phenomena of the material uni- 

 verse to the action of a substance occupying space, which connects the planets 

 and the earth, and which communicates light, heat, electricity and gravitation, 

 from one body to another, and mental emotion and imaginary ideas from one 



