230 
Matter Active . 
[March 
pound bodies point to more than one part, as distinctly as 
potash and soda pointed to a decomposition in the eyes of 
Davy. We are therefore compelled to look for a something 
out of which they were made, and it is quite fair to suppose 
that body to be hydrogen, at least for the present, and that 
is a body with weight. My opinion, however, is that it is 
too like other elements to be the original one ; it is too 
complex in character. I look to a simpler. I have called 
it Yle, or simply matter if you choose, matter abstractly 
with none of the known qualities of elements. These must 
be added in the school of creation. I should like a power 
to make the elements out of this Yle. You offer me the 
attraction of gravitation, but Yle does not gravitate. I have 
tried to get the sun to make them, and I confess it is a 
power so tremendous that it is a fair field for much specula- 
tion. There may be various stages of heat, and the atoms 
may become various at these stages, and there may be other 
powers besides heat, but so long as we cannot tell what will 
produce heat in ether without the finished atoms our specu- 
lation is imperfedt. 
John Dalton . — -In any case you are driven back a step, 
and your difficulties are not diminished. You have yet 
found no power to make your little engines, your molecules, 
your atoms of the present. For my part I see nothing 
beyond, and am satisfied to begin my study of creation as 
late in its history as their fadture. 
Roger Bacon . — I know that I am driven back, and I re^ 
cognise a time of creation when all was waste and void, 
when matter reflecting light did not exist, when atoms with 
chemical properties were not, when suns were not present to 
attradt and planets for moving round were not formed, when 
dust itself did not show its presence in space, and life was 
of course far from appearing. I have arrived at this point 
at which so many have arrived before me, looking at the 
eternal ether, if not in the same way as Aristotle did, and 
looking at the primitive material as far more subtle than 
our grosser bodies, partly as the alchemists did, but by no 
means exadtly so. I gave this idea in my works — that Yle 
produced all things, and that through it everything could be 
changed into everything. You will readily see that, if the 
elements are made of an antecedent, the step can be by the 
same power reversed, and matter may lose its existence and 
pass into ether. We can then suppose the sun to be a great 
agent for breaking the elements up into their primary parts, 
as well as we can suppose it making elements out of the 
prima materia. In whatever way we come to this materia, 
