66 
there are forces, but no motion, and therefore not a high tem- 
perature, but a perfect zero of cold ; a finite past duration, 
since if we went further back, the later motions must reappeal , 
only with their directions reversed, and the whole ground ol 
the theory would be swept away. And above all, we need a 
Creative Will, to determine the number and the place of all 
the atoms, and the laws of attraction and repulsion that must 
guide and determine all their later movements. For the 
orand aphorism of Newton must remain for ever firm and sure, 
however sciolists strive against it. “ Blind necessity, which is 
always the same everywhere, cofeld never produce this beauti- 
ful variety of things.” 
It is folly to derive a state of motion from one of rest, it 
motion has been eternal, or to describe an original state, if 
there never was an origin. The nebular theory, in the hands 
of the atheist, shares the fate of the corpse of Priam — 
Jacet ingens litore truncus, 
Avulsunique liumeris caput, et sine nomine corpus. 
Evolution, again, in Mr. Spencer’s work, is only an obscure 
synonym for the process of cooling. A heated body contracts 
and condenses when it cools, and this, in more learned phrase, 
is the integration of matter. It parts with some of its heat to 
the cooler bodies around it, and this is the dissipation of 
motion. Incoherent gases, by cooling, become imperfectly 
coherent fluids ; and these, when cooled further, coherent 
solids. A sea of aqueous vapour, or a bowl of water, to sense, 
is wholly homogeneous ; but ice-crystals are more or less 
sensibly heterogeneous. Thus mere cooling combines all the 
characters of evolution in Mr. Spencer’s definition. 
But can this be really the grand secret of nature, the key 
to a new and improved system of physical science ? Is thi3 
the discovery which is to throw that of Newton into the shade, 
and absorb into itself all mental philosophy and Christian 
faith ? A primitive nebula, intensely heated at first, has gone 
on cooling for almost infinite ages! If true, this would be 
grotesquely inadequate as a theory of all physical change. For 
this demands, not loose phrases or metaphysical verbiage, 
but distinct laws of force, like the law of gravitation ; and of 
these the theory offers no trace. But it is not true. It is 
rather the direct opposite of the truth. The primitive nebula, 
on the only hypothesis which gives us a right to assume its ex- 
istence at all, cannot have been intensely hot, but at an absolute 
zero of cold. Heat is atomic motion. And all motion, in a true 
