MATTER AND FORCE IN INORGANIC AND ORGANIC KINGDOMS 193 



demands vocal energy, and produces its due equivalent of sound ; but the intelligibility of the order is something 

 superadded, and its result may be to make not sound or heat alone, but history. 



" Energy is needed to perform any physical operation, but the energy is independent of the determination or 

 arrangement. Guidance and control are not forms of energy, and their superposition upon the scheme of physics 

 perturbs physical and mechanical laws no whit, though it may profoundly affect the consequences resulting from 

 those same laws. The whole effort of civilisation would be futile if we could not guide the powers of nature. The 

 powers are there, else we should be helpless ; but life and mind are outside those powers, and can direct them along 

 an organised course. 



■' And this same life or mind, as we know it, is accessible to petition, to affection, to pity, to a multitude of non- 

 physical influences ; and hence, indirectly, the little plot of physical universe which is now our temporary home 

 has become amenable to truly spiritual control." 



Sir Oliver Lodge's chief contentions are : — 



(1) That the fundamental laws of physics, complete and accurate as they are, in no way exclude guidance of 

 events by the agency of life or mind or other unknown influence. 



(2) That common experience shows that living creatures do exert such guidance, and further, that they are 

 amenable to non-material or spiritual influences from each other. 



The testimony of Sir Oliver Lodge in favour of a directing agency in the universe is of the greatest possible 

 importance. Not less important is his belief in life as a guiding power. The merely mechanical or automatic view 

 of the cosmos advocated by Haeckel and others fails, it appears to me, at every turn and in every direction. The 

 time, there is reason to believe, is not far distant when a strong reaction will set in against the fashionable physics 

 of modern times, as against a slow-working mechanical evolution and as against so-called natural selection, in 

 which, as explained, I do not believe. Theories which require unlimited time (untold millions of years) for their 

 realisation, and which rely on accident and chance rather than on a reasoned plan and certainty, can never be other 

 than disappointing when critically examined by the unbiassed inquirer. 



MATTER AND FORCE IN THE INORGANIC AND ORGANIC KINGDOMS— THEIR 

 RELATION TO LIFE, AND TO PLANTS AND ANIMALS 



Author's Views regarding Creation, Evolution, Natural Selection, Type, Locomotion, Environment, 

 Geology, &c. 



Various attempts have been made of late years to reduce all matter to one, and all force to one ; the object 

 being to identify organic and inorganic matter, and vital and physical force. It has also been contended that 

 matter and force are inseparable, that matter inevitably exerts force, and that no force can exist as apart from 

 matter. It has further been asserted that matter is eternal and occupies all space, that it had no beginning and 

 will have no end, that it is self -created and self-moving, that it is in a perpetual state of flux, continually entering 

 into new combinations, breaking up and re-forming itself, that it is a fixed quantity and admits of change of shape 

 but of no increase or decrease, that it is indestructible. Similar attempts have been made to unify force.i The 

 transformations occurring in matter and force are said to be incessant and infinite, and these transformations 

 occur in the atoms and molecules and in the tiniest specks of matter, as well as in the nebulae, stellar bodies, suns, 

 great world spheres, &c. 



It has also been maintained that organic matter is the natural product, under certain circumstances, of inorganic 

 matter, and that plants and animals are the outcome of spontaneous generation, and owe their existence to the 

 operation of purely mechanical, physical, and chemical processes ; that, in short, there is no such thing as Hving 

 matter as apart from the inorganic matter and force of the universe. The idea of a Creator and design in the cosmos 

 is wholly ignored. Matter and force, according to certain scientists, have created themselves, and estabhshed their 

 own laws, and these laws are inexorable. The world and all it contains, in their opinion, has been formed and is 

 regulated,' not by an intelhgent agent or First Cause (a Creator), but by blind chance and accident ; the inorganic 

 dead world -giving rise to the organic Hving world— spontaneous generation, environment, natural selection, 

 and external stimulation being all that are required to produce all known results provided sufficient time be 

 allowed. 



1 Tlic mdestructibility of matter is comparatively a very old doctrine : the modern view of the indestructibility of force was especially worked 

 out by Robert Mayer (1842) and Hermann Helmholtz (1847), 



VOL. I, ^ P 



