i 882.] 
Force and Matter. 
6 67 
the one or the other. In a work so exacting as that in 
question no words should be used expressing forces or sub- 
stances that are not the tangible or visible results of obser- 
vation and experiment. We know that matter is divisible 
into the minutest particles, but of these particles there is no 
proof that they are either atoms or molecules. A substance 
is pounded into the merest dust, and can be further disinte- 
grated so as to become undiscernible by the minutest micro- 
scopical tests. Professor Crookes has shown that matter can 
be resolved into a fourth state and a beyond — darkness. 
Professor Tyndall has shown that there is light only when 
there is a substance to reflect it. Here there appears to be 
neither substance nor force ; what then becomes of this in- 
destrudtible matter, on which our author so pertinaciously 
relies ? “ Nothing but the changes we perceive in matter 
could ever give us any notion as to the existence of a power 
which we qualify by the name of force” (p. 79). By Mr. 
Crookes’s experiment matter has been pursued into an ulti- 
mate range wherein neither matter nor force could be per- 
ceived. And further we must remember that, however 
identical matter and force appear to be, the static state 
never becomes the dynamic without an impulse; the im- 
pulse is foreign to or outside that in which the adtion occurs. 
Surely there must be a something (whatever that something 
be) besides force and matter. It follows, as a necessary 
consequence, that were there no external impulse, force and 
matter would have for ever remained enwrapped in the em- 
brace of the one and the other, and this glorious world, 
which we know as a world of adtion, would have been an 
utter void phenomenon, and its realities would never have 
been. 
Truly we are cognisant of the adtion of force only by 
means of the senses ; but when the question is of power, we 
have quite another subject to consider. There are mental 
powers which adt from within and create, e.g., pleasures and 
delights, distress and miseries. These powers are wholly 
without the scope of the senses, however they may readt on 
them. 
Because we know the adtion of force by means of the 
senses the author jumps at the conclusion that the 
world cannot have been created. He continues, assuming 
a creative power, soul, &c. : — “Time could not have 
existed before or after creation ; it could not have existed 
before because the notion of power is not reconcileable with 
the idea of nothing or inadtivity.” “ It could not have 
existed after the creation, as rest and inadtivity are again in- 
2x2 
