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In the foregoing pages I have connected causes and 
effects by their mutual relations with respect to force, 
time, and place. Force has appeared as an attraction tending 
to shorten distance between cause and effect, every motion it 
produces in accomplishing that end substituting for the old 
a new state of things, which is a new fact, a new phenomenon, 
or a new event. I have presented only three kinds of attrac- 
tion — the electrical, the gravitating, and the calorific ; each 
acting simultaneously with the others and producing the 
whole variety of physical nature. Time has marked the 
relations of force and place reciprocally to one another, 
all which are epitomized in the laws of force. The rela- 
tion of place between cause and effect has been shown to 
change with the motion produced by force, sometimes put 
into operation at the instigation of intellect either human or 
divine. And as a result of all this, while elucidating the 
fundamental principles of nature, and pointing to the inter- 
vention of man in the rigid operations of the universe, his 
appeal in faith to an intellect superior to his own in know- 
ledge and power has been justified for doing without any 
interference with established laws, things of which he him- 
self is incapable. 
Of far greater interest to man than the composition of 
cause and the operation of force, is the nature of force. 
By believers and sceptics alike, with very rare exceptions, 
physical force is regarded as something inherent to matter 
for its government, either placed in it once for all at the 
creation, or as the Atheists suppose, existing in it from all 
eternity : a something which can be distinguished from moral 
force even by those who admit its derivation from it. I have 
already referred to its origin by saying how moral force 
could assume to be physical, and at what epoch it was 
necessary the change should be made. It is impossible to 
conceive the creative mind to have made the rudimental 
matter of the universe, and to have left it an instant with- 
out forces and laws. What further knowledge we require 
we obtain from experience. We observe that the laws of its 
forces are unchangeable, by which we distinguish the 
physical from the moral. In reality it is moral still, moral 
volition assuming to act without any variableness from the 
plan fixed upon for the creation. Our own personal ex- 
perience furnishes us with evidence that this is the true 
distinction to be recognized between the moral and the 
physical Forces ; for we change our moral volition into 
physical force. In making the change we can even determine 
up to a certain limit what the magnitude and laws of the 
