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Matter Active. 
[March 
be simple. This is an important conclusion, because it not 
only means that these little engines — atoms — cannot work 
without power, and they could not be made without power, 
so that, instead of being the aCtual powers that govern the 
world, they are in a double stage of helplessness, both re- 
quiring to be made and driven like other machines. 
John Dalton . — You certainly gain a view farther back in 
creation, and have an idea of evolution of matter by this 
mode of thought, and no length of stages can change my 
knowledge that power must exist originally. Even those 
who tell us that heat, and therefore life, is got by gravitation 
merely reason in a circle ; for what is gravitation ? I am 
quite ready to believe that it is one of those characteristics 
that have been given to the elements, from which you are 
fairly entitled to call them compound ; for even in my 
system I give a very compound nature without having 
thought of a compound structure to account for it. 
Roger Bacon . — We must not stop here. The farther we 
go back the less does it appear to us that our matter has 
great power; it seems neither to make nor to unmake itself, 
and those who look to matter as beginning with excess of 
power and gradually dying out, only renewing itself partially 
by concussions until the final destruction, make a strange 
supposition, because the supposition involves a beginning of 
power made by matter, and a beginning of eternity, if we 
may so speak, as well as an end, so far as aCtive matter is con- 
cerned. I see neither and can comprehend neither, and it seems 
to me that we are led in this reasoning back to power quite in- 
conceivable developing matter : why this power did it so once 
and doesnot do it again there seems no reason for thinking, and 
it is possible to suppose this creative power as eternal more 
easily than it is to suppose the mere work which it performs 
to be eternal. If it worked before our mountains and our 
earth, it may work after them. It is just possible that the 
sun may prove a focus for Yle, to which to rush and be 
made into elements, and thus accounting for gravitation to 
the sun ; but this would not account for mutual adtion. It 
is also possible to think that the sun may be using old ma- 
terial, making it new, and thereby lighting up creation with 
the rubbish. But whatever be the case our matter is not 
aCtive enough to keep the Universe in motion of itself, and 
at best it may retain an impetus which may keep it going 
forward for a time, but of itself it is a slave ; it works only 
when it is driven ; and we are driven to conclude that neither 
from matter of our elements nor ether is obtained the power 
or forces that rule them. 
