1881.J The Formative Power in Nature. 271 
— the idiosyncracy of great minds. Had H. B. carefully 
noted what I wrote, he would have seen that I did not sup- 
pose I was adducing anything new. I wrote “ I am merely 
testing, &c., .... by the commonest phase of surface 
reasoning.” 
“ The material philosopher counts his atoms, and decides 
the Kosmos is composed of units of matter, in its eternity 
combining cause and effedt.” “ The physicist considers his 
conceptions as a summation of effedts, and as an idealisation 
of his dream finds the bases of all things in eternal matter.” 
The natural philosopher, in a purer ideal, “ taking note of 
infinitesimal quantities, brushes them aside in the truer aim 
of disclosing the religion of Nature, wherein he finds an in- 
telligence which man alone, of all created beings, shares.” 
Nature, whether contempkited in her higher or lower phases, 
has the same cadence, harmony, symmetry, and sympathy, 
whether exemplified in a sand-grain or a world, and in the 
beyond, a providence exemplified in the laws of being, not 
supernatural, although supersensual. 
H. B. thinks “ I should have demanded the meaning of 
the word spontaneity,” &c. There was no occasion to en- 
quire what Prof. Haeckel meant by spontaneity ; he explains 
it (this I should have thought H. B. would have known — 
he quotes as though he had read the work). Spontaneity 
pure and simple is generatio cequivoca , i.e ., the coming into 
being through a self-imposed and inherent necessity, without 
the adtion of any will, as Topsy came into being, i.e., she 
“growed;” in fadt exadtly as Webster defines the word as 
derived from the Latin spontaneitas, “ the quality or state of 
being spontaneous, or adting from native feeling, proneness, 
or temperament, without constraint or external force, i.e., 
from an inherent necessity.” Spontaneous has quite a dif- 
ferent meaning : Lat. spontaneus, from sponte, free will, volun- 
tarily. That I understand by spontaneous or spontaneity 
I have written elsewhere.* It is sufficient to say I do not 
mean generatio cequivoca. There exists no need “ to hoist 
them (the monists) with their own petard ;” they are always 
being “ hoisted,” but they always return to the charge, fre- 
quently with increased virulence. If the principles of our 
common reason have no effedt, hard words are sure to fail. 
Referring to a paragraph in which I say “ Stratifications 
could only have arisen from a solidification of the gaseous 
substance which in amalgamation we term the ether,” in- 
stead of stratification I should have said solid substance 
* Scientific Materialism, &c., pp. 235 to 261. 
