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The Formative Power in Nature. [February, 
III. THE FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 
By Sidney Billing. 
T<(^7~HATEVBR be the origin of nature, analogy shows 
that there necessarily must have been an ante- 
^ cedent to all nature, as we know it, a formative 
principle. This principle, or all reasoning on that we know 
and see is ineffective, must be the consequence of a direCt 
purpose, as we find all forms, inorganic and organic, coalesce 
so as to constitute an homogeneity. When purpose is 
denied to the formative powers by which nature was builded 
the result would be confusion, i.e., we should have to fall 
back upon an accidental agglomeration of substances. No- 
where in nature do we find any warrant for such an assump- 
tion, and in nature, as we know it, an impossibility, for a 
repetition of accidents would never conform in orderly 
arrangement. Nature works through affinities, producing a 
continual range of effects proceeding from a primitive cause ; 
it selects the materials fitted for the particular purpose, dis- 
persing those unfitted, to form new combinations. If we find 
nothing else in nature we find order as an outcome of the 
perfect adaptation of diversified parts to produce a given 
result. Whatever the formative principle we see in nature 
may be, whatever it may be called, God or monism, or any 
other materialistic name, it is the developing power, or pur- 
pose resulting in effects, and necessarily there mu t have 
existed with it a maintaining power. Whatever thes power 
or cause it is impossible to ignore a cause,* and whether the 
cause be deistic, natural, or monistic we arrive at an ante- 
cedent something, possessing an intelligence only equalled 
by its power, by and through which the phenomena of nature 
arose ; andfurther, whateverthis cause, intelligence, or power, 
it worked out its details by progressive steps. 
What is the teaching of geology and palaeontology ? That 
each of its vast eras, stretching back in their periods to such 
immensities that the human mind never really comprehends 
the interval, not numbered by thousands or millions of years, 
but by millions of millions, and perhaps even a higher term. 
Each of these eras presents different stratifications and forms, 
which stratifications could only have arisen from a solidifi- 
cation of the gaseous substance, which in amalgamation we 
term the ether. The earth’s crust lies in strata, its grandest 
* Haeckel, stout an upholder as he is of monism, admits a cause, vide, 
“ History of Creation.” 
