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ing state of matter, you can prove an end of it. I do not think that is to 
be arrived at logically, and I think that Mr. Bradlaugh pointed out a diffi- 
culty there ; but whether it arose from a want of clearness on the part of Mr. 
Pattison or not I am unable to say. Suppose the astronomical theory believed 
in before Laplace were true. Up to that time it was supposed that there 
were certain changes going on in the orbits of the planets, which in the 
end would inevitably drag all the planets into the sun. Suppose that the sun 
is a mass of heated matter, and that all the planets fell into the sun and 
weie destroyed. Still the matter of which the planets consisted would not be 
destroyed. (Hear, hear.) I perfectly agree with that view, and I am in- 
debted to Mr. Bradlaugh for coming here ; because we want people to come 
and point out the holes in our armour, and we ought to feel obliged to men 
who show us where we are faulty. If you burnt up all the planets, still 
something would remain. For instance, when this gas by which we now see 
is burnt, it is not destroyed, it is only changed in its form and conditions ; 
and if all the planetary bodies were burnt up, there would not be a particle 
of matter destroyed. I quite grant that, from the mere examination of 
matter itself it is impossible to arrive at any argument as to its ending or 
beginning, so far as dead matter is concerned. There is one argument that 
a geologist may take up : he may say : “No matter what theory you adopt 
with regard to living matter— whether you take the slow processes of evolu- 
tion,. whether you take a nebular earth slowly cooling and then forming 
granite, and so. on, or whether you take a slow series of changes going back to 
an indefinite time— the earth does show the convincing fact that there must 
have been a commencement of those phenomena which we call life, entirely 
distinct from the remarkable phenomena belonging to dead matter.” If I 
were to confine myself to dead matter, I believe I should have as strong an 
argument for design as I should find in living matter. I take up the simplest 
crystal which is united with others in forming a small piece of granite, of whose 
origin I have not the slightest notion. I know that granite is formed of 
crystals, composed of three and sometimes more distinct mineral substances, 
penetrating and interlocking one another, and yet each one a distinct crystal ; 
but I have no conception, from what I know of art or nature, of how that 
mysterious substance can be formed. I find nothing corresponding to it in 
life, or m the rocks of other periods. Mr. Pattison in his paper has fallen 
into the old notion that granite or the granitic rocks are the oldest of all. 
That was the old theory among geologists, but it has been acknowledged 
by Sir Charles Lyell in his last book that you may find granite of all ages, 
and granite formed in any given age. But I have no means of conceiving 
how, either by volcanic action or by any process of crystallization, the granite 
rock can be formed. But leaving that point, I say again that if you take 
any of the crystals of the granite (for there is not any silica found by itself, 
ut it is in combination, and the most extraordinary combination, with other 
substances, as mica and felspar, most composite minerals),— if you take the 
crysta s or the chemical constituents of the granite rocks, you have the 
