1882.] 
Force and Matter. 
67 1 
deem unnecessary, e.g., diseases, parasites, &c. Necessity 
would cease when the needed forms were produced, inorganic 
and organic, and such phenomena as are necessary for their 
support and maintenance. No creature would require more 
than an instinctive power for generation, preservation, and 
adaptation to climatic changes. If, then, all that is animate 
is to become inanimate, there would be but a succession of 
changes ; and man, what place could he have in this scheme 
of necessity ? 
Can we conceive that the purpose of creation is accom- 
plished by man being born but to die ? We can conceive 
that the wondrous development of organised forms was insti- 
tuted that man might be ; but if there be after this life no 
beyond for intellectual man, he exists but as a thought, and 
expires in its utterance ; and all we know of that immensity, 
the universe, is as of an ingenious and wasted mechanism 
springing from nothing and ending in nothing. Intellect in 
such a corollary would be no necessity, but whence this 
necessity ? Did it create itself and its own impulses ? If 
so, we do not seem far short of an intelligent creator ; but 
then this necessity is governed by law — whence came these 
laws ? Accidental recurrences! Law implies not only a law 
given but a lawmaintainer ; hence intelligence direction. If 
this be the outset of causce ejficientes, do we appear to be very 
distant from the causce finales ? Experience shows there is no 
finality in the finite. Each man in the impressiveness of his 
own consciousness must judge in his own conceptions — by 
faith or by faCts, a God and intelligence, no God but 
matter, a creator or a chance. God the universe and man 
as a collective faCt (whatever be the postulates of Faith) is 
an open secret only to be resolved in the Unknown. 
Postscript. — Dr. Buchner’s work, “ Force and Matter,” 
was read by me with the intention of comment and answer ; 
but I find the intended task was completed even before I had 
heard of Dr. Buchner (if I except an isolated observation 
occurring in Dr. Elam’s “ Winds of Doctrine ”). My obser- 
vations are mostly confined to the first chapter of the work — 
viz., Force and Matter, with its incidents, necessity and the 
no God hypothesis. If Lucretius is unsatisfied and requires 
further answer, I refer him to my work, “ Scientific 
Materialism,” where he will find all the hypotheses of Dr. 
Buchner anticipated, argued, and, as I conceive, refuted. 
