I879-J 
Matter Active * 
233 
We have been obliged to go farther back than the forma- 
tion of our elements to seek the power, and lest the clue of 
the reasoning be lost I shall repeat the stages : — 
The elements known to us will not a ft without heat. 
They are therefore without life in themselves. 
Heat is conveyed to them ; from the sun, for example. 
There must be an agent of communication if heat be 
mere motiop. 
This agent we call ether, — let us spell it aether, — and to 
convey vibrations it must be material. (In excessive cold, 
communication of heat even from solid to solid can only be 
by means of aether.) 
It would seem that aether does not gravitate ; gravitation 
is therefore not an essential of matter. 
If we freeze down our elements to the most inert condition 
known, they still gravitate. 
Therefore they are not the simplest matter; they have a 
quality beyond that which aether has. 
If made of anything we suppose the simplest thing we 
know of — we call that aether, but there may be a simpler still 
— let us say Yle. 
Then as to priority. Heat made by the rushing together 
of the elements could not have been the original aft of 
creation, because the elements, as we have them gravitating, 
require first to be made ; for we have seen that aether, or 
matter, is free from one of the most general qualities of 
our elements. It is simpler. 
Heat therefore is not the great fundamental power of 
Creation. 
Heat is a power to drive the elements when made. 
We come, then, to an original, or at least an early, matter, 
less like matter than our own, and we seek a power to make 
elements from it. 
Heat does not give life or activity to the elements ; it only 
produces one of the conditions in which they are able to 
aft. Having various charafters they must be variously 
organised, and heat sets them in motion accordingly. 
Whenever we follow matter carefully we come to help- 
lessness, immobility, death, unless revived from without. 
It is set in motion by a something which is manifestly sepa- 
rate from itself. But there are many intricacies in the 
thought, and we shall leave it for a while, if you please. 
John Dalton . — There is nothing in your ideas opposed to 
mine. I was contented with that which I saw, but I must 
confess that you are more likely to be right than I was, in 
boldly making the atoms engines, as you call them, or com- 
