1 882.] 
Force and Matter . 
669 
— of God if you will— but in it there can be no idea of His 
“ reposing after creation,” but yet as an individual capable 
of again suspending his own laws.” 
The idea of a god, other than those of the vulgar, was 
entertained by Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, Aristotle, and others 
of the Greek philosophers. The abundance of the myths of 
ancient Greece shows the religious reverence the people had 
for their gods. Their superstitions being excited, the gods 
were personified and pictured as caretakers, and were sup- 
posed to be present in the minutest relations. They were, 
in faCt, the presiding providence of the people (vide “ Grote’s 
Greece,” vols. i. and ii.) If Dr. Buchner had not been en- 
grossed by preconceived views, his comments would have 
been directed to that conception of God which engrosses the 
minds of philosophers rather than to those phases of His 
being delineated by ecclesiastics. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
(“ First Principles,” p. 37) says : — “ We cannot think at all 
about the impressions which the external world produces 
upon us without thinking of them as caused, and we cannot 
carry out an inquiry concerning their causation without 
inevitably committing ourselves to the hypothesis of a first 
cause.” And when Dr. Buchner says the unknown is to be 
interpreted by the known, the question at issue appears to 
be decided. Chemistry and mechanics, as we know them, 
are all developed by the intelligence of man ; and so, by a 
parity of reasoning, it is a fair conclusion that the chemistry 
and mechanics of nature were the result of intelligent direc- 
tion. It appears idle to imagine that the framework of the 
universe, or even the mechanism of an animal, could have 
arisen from casual adaptations. There is a grand series of 
formations extending from the protoamoeba up to man. How 
could their orderly arrangement have arisen excepting by an 
internal energy engrafted by an intellectual power into the 
germ, endowing it with the capability, by slow gradations, 
by differentiation, adaptation, and development to attain that 
perfect fitness which is found in all organisms. We have 
something more here than force and matter and necessity. 
All forms of life are a pushing from a vital centre. Aristotle 
held that the universe originated from one unmoving centre. 
From all we glean from nature, we are bound to conclude 
that the purpose and plan of objective phenomena was con- 
ceived once for all, and that there were no tentative efforts 
and corrections. The mystery is not so much the differen- 
tiation we everywhere observe as the principle or power by 
which they are produced. The conception of the plan of the 
evolution of forms — the homogeneity everywhere observable 
