670 
Force and Matter . 
[November, 
shows its factor was an intelligence, or we should not have 
gradations of development, as proved by the successive 
phases of embryonic changes, for it would have been as easy 
to have presented the perfected forms. 
What then is the architect of nature, God or accident ? 
The former alternative has been considered. Accident, not 
one but an interminable succession, and so opportunely 
occurring that when the necessity arises an accident is ready 
to meet it, and these successions are so endless and of so 
precise a character that they create uniformity and order, 
adapt parts to parts, and each to the whole, not one whole 
but many millions of wholes for each organic form, whether 
animate or inanimate, due to a fortuitous concurrence of 
chances. If Dr. Buchner would apply his mathematics, for 
that is the scientific test now-a-days, and lived a life as long 
as the world has had being and had space for his numerals, 
he possibly might find the sum of the chances by which all 
these accidents would coalesce and produce unity. Such 
assumptions — they are not reasoned hypotheses — have no 
basis for argument. All will agree with Liebig “that no 
force can originate from nothing,” and with Czolbe, “ an 
absolute nothing is not cogitable.” What, then, is the some- 
thing which sets matter in motion ? Dr. Buchner does not 
tell us whence, where, and what was the originating impulse. 
Were the universe alone possessed by matter and force, we 
should have but inertia, no grind of worlds, no animate forms, 
a universe of nothingness. Day by day we see the human 
intellect creating, yet intelligence is not matter, although it 
uses matter in its embodiment when it becomes phenomenal. 
What, then, is this something but intellectual energy which 
disintegrated the chaos (the voluntary motion of Lucretius ?), 
assorted its elements, and which condensed and gave to them 
orderly assimilations. The true and common sense solution 
of all cosmic problems is, the originating cause, be it what 
it may, produced an effeCt, and this effeCt produced another 
effeCt, and so became the cause of the latter ; so every 
effeCt becomes the cause of the succeeding effeCt, and 
so on to the end of the chapter. Thus we have a con- 
tinuing beginning — an increasing energy instituting an 
untiring aCtion — all due to the originating impulse, which of 
necessity is independent of the force and matter on which it 
aCts. 
If we could adopt necessity ( causce efficientes) as the aCting 
impulse we still have a something alien to the thing aCted 
on, and we should also remember that with our ideas as to 
natural results there are many things in nature which we 
