«4 



ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT ' 



infinity ? or is there a limit to such divisibility, beyond which the process 

 cannot possibly proceed ? and if so, are the ultimate bodies into which it 

 is capable of dissolving still susceptible of developement, or, from their 

 attenuation, removed beyond all power of detection ? 



These are questions which have agitated the world in almost ail ages, 

 and have laid a foundation for a variety of theories of too much conse- 

 quence to be passed over in a course of physical investigation. 



The tenet of an infinite divisibility of matter, whether in ancient or 

 modern times, appears to have been a mere invention for the purpose of 

 avoiding one or two self-contradictions supposed to be chargeable upon 

 the doctrine of its ultimate and elementary solidity ; but which, I much 

 fear, will be found to have given birth to far more self-contradiction than 

 it has removed. The mode of reasoning, however, by which this tenet 

 was arrived at in ancient Greece, was essentially different from that by 

 which it has been arrived at in our own day. 



It being, as we observed in our last lecture, an uncontroverted maxim 

 among all the Greek philosophers, of every sect and school whatever, that 

 nothing could proceed from nothing, matter was of course conceived to 

 have existed eternally, or it could not have existed at all. But it appeared 

 o^svious to most of them, that matter is as certainly unintelligent as they 

 conjectured it is certainly eternal. The existence of intelligence, however, 

 is still more demonstrable throughout nature than the existence of matter 

 itself ; and hence such philosophers were driven to the acknowledgment 

 of an intelligent principle distinct from a material substance ; and from the 

 union of these two powers they accounted for the origin of the world : 

 matter being merely passive and plastic, and put into form and endowed 

 with the qualities and properties of body by the energy of the intelligent 

 agent. But if form and corporeal properties have b^en communicated to 

 it, it must, before such communic?*tion, and in its first or primal state, have 

 been destitute of form ; and that it was thus destitute is incontrovertible, 

 continued the same schools of philosophy, because form presupposes the 

 existence of intelligence, and must be, under every shape and modification, 

 the product of an intelligent energy ; for it is impossible that matter could 

 have had a power of assuming one mode of form rather than another mode : 

 since, if capable of assuming any kind, it must have been equally capable 

 of assuming every kind, and, of course, of exhibiting intelligent effects 

 without an intelligent cause, which would be utter nonsense. 



Such is the general train of reasoning that seems to have operated upon 

 the minds of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, in impelhng them to the 

 belief that matter, in its primary state, to adopt the words of Cicero, in 

 which he explains the Platonic doctrine, " is a substance without form or 

 quality, but capable of receiving all forms, and undergoing every kind of 

 change ; in doing which, however, it never suffers annihilation, but merely 

 a solution of its parts, which are in their nature infinitely divisible, and 

 move in portions of space which are also infinitely divisible."* 



But if we abstract from matter form and quality, and at the same time 

 deny it intelligence, what is there left to constitute it an eternal substance 

 of any kind ? and by what means could pure incorporeal intelligence 

 endow it with form ? 



These diflftculties are insuperable ; and, though attempted to be explained 

 in different ways by each of these philosophers, they press like millstones- 



* Acsid. Qusest. lib. i. cap. 8c 



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