272 The Formative Power in Nature. [May, 
(which was in my mind at the time I wrote). Stratifications 
arise, as a general principle, from the denudation of the 
rocks, sometimes modified by igneous action. H. B. says 
“he is uncertain whether he understands the author’s 
meaning,” and goes on to say “ presuming ” (as the printer 
makes him say) “ that it is the lumi in germs,” instead of, 
as it should have been, “ the luminiferous ether ” that is 
here alluded to, which he seems to consider as a gas more 
subtle than those composing our atmosphere. I would ob- 
serve that this theory is a mere assumption,” &c. He 
answers this phantom assumption which he has reared by 
another theory which is equally an assumption. Passim I 
may say the concluding paragraph of H. B.’s letter (on p. 243) 
is a complete mystification : whatever be his conception of 
the Creator or Creation, he should at the least have sup- 
posed that an aCt of creation was done once for all, not to 
be afterwards modified and adapted by Him. Whatever 
creation was, to my mind, the aCt was done once for all, 
self-containing and self-continuing; being stored with inte- 
rior energy it became self-modifying. A tentative power, so 
far as the Creator is concerned, could never be conceived by 
anyone who has a true and real appreciation of what the 
Creator as God must mean, “ who said be, and it was.” 
These confusions arise, no doubt, from the attempt to recon- 
cile in his mind Theology with Science. 
It is not because to our perceptions there are different 
forms of matter {i.e., elemental substances), that they were 
created in the forms which are presented to our perceptions. 
It is more than possible that they are the modifications and 
differentiations of one primordial substance by the inter- 
fusion of the forces (unless force and matter had one and 
the same initiation). The chemical properties of carbon 
and its extraordinary combinations (so to speak) lead to this 
inference, and this view gathers pertinence from the fa< 5 t 
that Mr. Norman Lockyer resolved one of these so- 
called elements (if I mistake not, copper), proving it to be 
a combination. 
Mr. Crookes has shown that there is a fourth state of 
matter, and probably a something beyond ; therefore it 
would be easy to arrive at the idea “of a gas more subtle 
than that composing our atmosphere.” If I were asked what 
my idea of the ether is, I should probably answer — a subtle 
something which permeates the universe, and proceeds di- 
rectly from the will of the Creator, in which all things exist, 
and out of which worlds and systems of worlds, and all 
things which exist with them, are formed. 
