i5o 
Matter Dead. 
[February, 
man’s progress in the industrial arts, in power, whether 
destructive or constructive, is ultimately due to invention, 
the alleged stationariness of the lower animals as compared 
with man can no longer be maintained. 
II. MATTER DEAD. 
“ Elementa sunt fafta de Yle.” — Roger Bacon. 
J1/0ET us suppose Roger Bacon to be a good represent- 
ative of the philosophy that matter is one, and John 
Dalton as representing belief in the primordial di- 
versity of atoms, and let each have a modern mouthpiece. 
We can imagine the following : — 
Roger Bacon — I have read in a German book something 
like this ; Give me an atom, and I make the world, life and 
thought included. This was not writing of the highest 
class there, but it was from observing the tone of the writing 
of some of the most talented men, and I certainly think it 
not quite unfair to draw such conclusions as the writer drew 
after imbibing for truth the thoughts of the most prominent 
men. Have I not seen, also, in the writings of one of the 
men considered first in rank, and certainly by himself as 
first in importance, that the finest feelings of the soul are all 
dependent on a certain fluid which we are left to suppose 
produces them. 
To the first observation there is a short reply, and if any 
man founds his philosophy on such a supposed knowledge 
of the aCtion of atoms he can gain confidence only from the 
most ignorant or the most illogical. We do not know how 
any atom aCts, and the assertion is simply akin to the 
sayings of Baron Munchausen. 
If to the second observation any one gives trust, he may 
be correct in a sense, as we may say no conscious thought 
occurs in man without water ; but if any man will say that 
he knows why any certain substance, liquid or solid, aCts in 
producing thought, he is a visionary, and does not belong to 
the class of sound scientific men : him also I put on my 
shelves with the boasting Baron. And yet how many men 
there are who suppose that these things are actually known, 
