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and conflicting hypotheses, that some scientific men have been 
guilty of, in reference to Force, Energy, and Motion. This alone, 
if satisfactorily accomplished, were worth an effort ; still that 
consideration only would not have induced me to enter the 
lists against such men as Tyndall, Thompson, Tait, &c., while 
other, and more apparently practical matters were demanding 
my immediate attention. The hypotheses of “the Conserva- 
tion of Energy,” ‘and “ the Perpetuity of Motion,” are, how- 
ever, not mere abstract reasonings, devoid of interest to the 
moralist or the theologian ; but reasonings, if such they may 
be called, that would land him where he by no means wishes 
to go. In Biology they lead to Evolution, in Theology to 
Pantheism, in Philosophy to Materialism, and in Morals to 
Necessitarianism. A very few quotations will at once make it 
evident that these are the views and purposes of those also who 
teach these hypotheses, that they are not blind to the ultimate 
issue of their own teachings, but rather, perhaps, this foreseen 
issue may be one cause of their earnestness. Be this as it 
may, we must not blame them if we remain blind to the 
character of the abyss in which they would plunge us, for their 
statements are distinct enough. Mr. Herbert Spencer writes, — 
“ If it can be shown that the persistence of Force is not a 
datum of consciousness ; or if it can be shown that tha several 
laws of Force above specified are not corollaries from it ; then, 
indeed, it will be shown that the theory of Evolution has not 
the certainty here claimed for it. But nothing short of this 
can invalidate the general conclusions arrived at.”* Again, 
on page 246 he writes, — “ The continuity of Motion, like 
the indestructibility of Matter, is clearly an axiom under- 
lying the very possibility of a rational theory of Evolution. 
That kind of change in the arrangement of parts, which 
we have found to constitute Evolution, could not be deductively 
explained were it possible for motion either to appear or disap- 
pear.” He elsewhere carries out the hypothesis to its legiti- 
mate issue, and maintains that thought is nothing more than 
converted heat, or chemical affinity ; a mere mode of motion. 
On page 280 of the “Principles” we read, “Various classes 
of facts thus unite to prove that the law of metamorphosis, 
which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between 
them and the mental forces.* Those modes of the Unknowable 
which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, &c., are 
alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of 
the Unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, 
thought: these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re- 
* “ First Principles,” p. 488. 
