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The first action of a force precedes “ visible ” continuity, and 
may even in some sense touch the visible. _ It springs 
cedes'pheifo- from the Unseen , no doubt, but it explains not its 
mena> previous being, or latent power. The latent potentia, 
in the language of Aquinas, has escaped into act. It is as 
much a proof of a Universe out of which it emerges, as of the 
world into which it breaks, giving “ no account of its matters 
It then begins perhaps a continuous series of activities aud 
phenomena which it dominates very largely ; but it would deny 
itself if it did not repudiate preceding mechanical continuity. 
So far as experience goes, latent, originate force 
noTanfoi & from the unseen is, by its very hypothesis, something 
nature. beyond mere contact. It even, at times, seems to 
defy it. How often, and at what points, “ force ” acts, whether 
communicating itself, or repeating intermittently its own 
action, or else being supplemented by inferior subtle agencies— 
« demons,- ” as our authors suggest, (as Philo also),— no analysis 
informs us. We have but to choose between various hypotheses, 
as indeed our authors confess in their ingenuous quotation from 
D The°physical Universe is shut up within the statement that 
it has an end, and had a beginning. That is the sum of facts 
which the law of physical continuity can explain. The logical 
inference from that statement is, that the beginning of the 
physical Universe was not continuous, at least according to 
the phenomenal use of the term. . 
42. First, that the Visible Universe did not begin from 
nothing (even though it came out of nothing), is fully adrni e 
by all ; next, that it proceeded from an invisible order of thing , 
or beings, or a Being anterior to the chain of plieno- 
Logicai in- mena i continuity, is affirmed even by the authors, 
thefacts of m But if such Being were anterior to all phenomenal 
Science ' continuity, he is no part of the continuous order. 
That continuous order “ begins.” W e have no reason whatever 
suggested for supposing that at the expiry of the world s lease 
of present physical continuity, there will be a renewal on 
similar terms ; nor that the old anterior Force will act again. 
Neither can we reason back, and say that the Law of Continuity 
of the present physical universe started, (with all the action of 
forces, and then energies), as a continuation from a previously 
expired Universe ; for we do not know that. Nor yet that the 
forces of the Invisible Universe necessarily hold on parallel 
with this, retaining their own separate life, as well as every- 
where continuing distinct impetus in our phenomenal direction. 
Our authors disclaim metaphysics, but for all that they must 
not decline to think. To stretch the present Law of Continuity 
