[ 20 ] 



LECTURE II. 



ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT PRINCIPLES OF THINGIS. 



. Our study for the present lecture is the first or simplest principles of 

 bodies, so far as we have hitherto been able to obtain any degree of know- 

 ledge upon this recondite inquiry, and the means by which they are com- 

 bined or separated from each other, so as to produce different kinds and 

 orders of sensible objects. 



A very slight contemplation of nature is sufficient to show us that matter 

 under every visible form and modification, when regarded in its general 

 mass, is perpetually changing ; alternately living, dying, and reviving ; de- 

 composing into elements that elude our pursuit 5 and recombining into new 

 shapes and energies and modes of existence. The purest and most com- 

 pact metals become tarnished or converted into a calx or oxyde on its 

 surface, and the most durable and crystallized rocks crumble into granules ; 

 and the matter constituting these oxydes and granules, by an additional 

 series of operations, is still farther decomposed, till every vestige of their 

 late character is lost, and the elementary principles of which they consisted 

 are appropriated to other purposes, and spring to view under other forms 

 and faculties. The same process takes place in the organized world. Tii« 

 germ becomes a seed, the seed a sapling, the sapling a tree ; the embryo 

 becomes an infant, the infant, a youth, the youth a man : and having thus 

 ascended the scale of maturity, both, in like manner, begin the downward 

 path to decay ; and, so far as relates to the visible materials of which they 

 consist, both at length moulder into one common elementary mass, and 

 furnish fresh fuel for fresh generations of animal or vegetable existence f so 

 that all is in motion, all is striving to burst the bonds of its present state ; 

 not an atom is idle ; and the frugal economy of nature makes one set of 

 materials answer the purpose of many, and moulds it into every diversified 

 figure of being and beauty and happiness. 



It has hence been said, that matter is necessarily corruptible, and is 

 perpetually changing from its intrinsic nature, and that the physical and 

 moral evils of life, are mainly attributable to this perverse and incorrigible 

 propensity. Such was the doctrine of many of the most eminent schools 

 of ancient philosophy, both of Greece and Asia, and such continues to be 

 the doctrine of various schools of the present day ; a doctrine which has 

 not unlrequently been considered as of the utmost importance, and as 

 forming the l)est defence of the benevolence of the Supreme Architect ; 

 who, we are told, notwithstanding all the pains and calamities, the tumults 

 and disorders of nature, has made the most of matter that it would admit of, 

 and has tempered it not only with a positive predominancy of good over 

 evil, but with as much and as real good as could possibly be infused into it. 



To argue thus, is to revive the theory of pure Platonism, far too exten- 

 sively introduced into the Christian world, as 1 hinted in our last lecture, 

 upon the first conversion of the Grecian philosophers who had been chiefly 

 students in the Platonic school ; and to suppose the existence of matter 

 as an independent and eternal principle. " God," says the sublime but 

 mistaken founder of this school, " wills, as far as it is possible^ every thing 

 ' gfood and nothing evil " but it cannot be that evil should be destroyed, 



* ThoBt, t. i. p. 1 76. 



