56 
the Nebular hypothesis. Of unformed star-dust ; of a fire 
mfst revolving fiercely on its axis, slowly cooling and throwing 
“ff pllnlts and comets from the refrigerating mass of a sun. 
But P whence this mist, this great heat ? Professor m 3 
“ Constitution of the Universe, leads us hckto g : g > 
when the elementary constituents of our rocks clashed together 
Ind produced the motion of heat.” But whence ages “go the 
atoms constituting the elementary particles of these rocks . 
Whence the force that caused them to clash toget er . 
silent. The chain of endless causation snaps asunder . he > ©o; - 
fesTes that he knows no more of the ongm of force than he 
does of the origin of matter. But where our modern English 
JXLrtaiSt., Mr. (Wlbjjwa l». I* 
Buchner’s views on “ Force and Matter m an English dress to 
Sle us bo7dy to elicit truth and to overthrow prejudice. 
Here, without any shrinking, shall we find the « chain of endless 
causation” earned to its legitimate conclusions. 
Dr. Buchner sets forth in the strongest t®rms the rmrnor 
tality, indestructibility, infinity and imperishabdity ofmattor 
and its twin attendant force. He teaches us that i matter ^ 
not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit, ^ghs to sco 
not only the idea of a Creator, but a God. _ Natui e, he t 
us “ knows neither a supernatural beginning nor a sup 
natural continuance. NaWe, the all-engendermg and aU 
devouring, is its own beginning and end birth and de^h; 
She produced man by her own power, and takes him again 
Nature, not God. He knows no God but man s 
Yerily Dr. Buchner would have us eat of the fiui ... 
of knowledge, that we might be as gods. He quotes, with 
approbation^ the saying of Ludwig Feuerbach, An extraneous 
and superhuman god is nothing but an extraneous and super- 
“LT.elf> subjective being, pl^ b, t». £ .st»g 
limits, above the objective nature of man. And how getting 
rid of a creator, does he give us the origin of ^n^orvitahty 
on the earth? “There was a time he asserts ^en 
earth— a fiery globe— was not merely incapable of ^producing 
Bring beings, but was hostile to the existence «f vegetable 
and animal organisms. It was only after having cooled down, 
and after the precipitation of the watery vapours w ic sui- 
rounded it, that the crust of the earth assumed a form which, 
in its further development, rendered the existence of v 
"SS’ZS‘5^ prove, »itb conmder.ble 
that the organic beings which people the earth ow 
origin and propagation solely to the conjoine ac 10 ^ „ ^ 
forces, and that the gradual change and development of the 
