137 
molecules of visible matter are derived from the Unseen 
Universe (p. 146), and yet they refer to Clerk-Maxwell’s 
demons as “essentially finite intelligences,” who, without 
spending work, could restore energy in the Visible Universe. 
These hypotheses seem to be quite incoherent. Our authors 
tell us that matter and life are both “ developed from the unseen, 
in which they existed from eternity” (pp. 159 and 188, ed.3); and 
then they think there is an intelligent agent who develops energy, 
and a similar intelligent agent who develops life; and, we suppose 
(though we are not precisely told), that, being eternal, they act 
simultaneously? (or, is “life” antecedent to “energy”?). — 
And as to “forces,” which give rise to transmutations of energy 
(edit. 4, p. 199), they also “come from the unseen.” Yet we 
are quite unable to reconcile with this the assertion that we 
“have no proof that force proper has objective existence”; 
and probably there is “ no such thing as force, any more than 
there is any such thing as sound and light” (p. 104, edit. 4). 
If this means that force is only a i-esult of certain molecular 
conditions, there would seem to be the same objection to it that 
lies against the materialists’ view of the rise of consciousness 
(p. 75). They say that there is no evidence for identifying life 
with organization; but is there any to identify original force, 
as such, with organization ? 
73. There is something, however, almost intolerable in the 
repeated assertions, in the last edition especially (clashing with 
Newton’s second interpretation of the third Law of Motion) 
(p. 77, 3rd edit.), “ that force is nothing,” and yet may be re- 
presented as “ an endowment ” of something else, which may 
exist, and yet “ without doing anything .” Why suppose these 
“brute forces” at all — these “inorganic forces,” or, these 
“endowments,” or “demons” — whether Clerk-Maxwell’s or 
Sir W. Thomson’s, or Malebrauche’s, or Le Sage’s, or 
Herbert Spencer’s “ power,” or the old-fashioned imaginings 
reminding us of Celsus, or the Gnostics, as to similar SwaytLg 
and Saiyovia. Herbert Spencer’s are, we observe, tacitly with- 
drawn from the “fourth edition”; — but why? (p. 72) There 
ought to have been a full explanation of the suppression of the 
statement that “every phenomenon implies a power ” ; and of 
some other suppressions (as p. 158). 
Nor is the rough saying, that to speak of the “ Persistency 
or Indestructibility of Force is unscientific,” at all satisfactory 
or sufficient. Sir W. R. Groves, in the work referred to by 
our authors (The Correlation of Forces, p. 16), says that 
“ force cannot be annihilated.” Groves uses this term Force 
partly inhibited and partly and capriciously used by our 
cow 
