Genesis of Matter. 
[October, 
496 
The difficulty now is to know in what relation this new, 
or rather primitive substance really stands to matter at all. 
We might say, in one aspedf, as an iron magnet stands to a 
piece of iron. As a magnet it is powerful, and if nothing 
but iron were about it we should see greater influence ; it 
lifts iron in spite of gravitation, and a few touches make it 
dead iron again. The space round the magnet is to iron as 
if it were solid and resisting. Is it irrational to suppose 
matter which fills space, and by a reversed relation turns all 
the space into a solid. It is no more wonderful ; in wan- 
dering into past or distant nature the eye is unable to see 
clearly. 
But, after all, is this not a mere repetition of Helmholz’s 
idea. It may be like it in some respedts, but not in all, and 
in this it is very different — he seems to understand the con- 
dition to which he reduces matter. I do not understand 
the state in which mine is ; strange new conditions arise, 
and I need not say that I cannot see how his will work. I 
look only to certain analogies very safe for easy reasoning 
and pioneering. 
Another objection seems to be that if you have brought 
matter to nothing your reasoning is of no use. I have 
brought it to nothing, or at least to a something which at 
first view seems next to it, that it may be seen how little it 
is without the breath of life put into it. Even the life 
called resistance is almost gone, — certainly all the life that 
we call usually material, — but give it combination and it 
may fall to the sun as hydrogen, and it may rave amongst 
oxygen to keep up our constant fires. Certainly it is a 
limited view that gives to our elements only primitive life, 
and that conceives them to be simple. Of course I use 
life analogical^. Neptune never went to Greenland, so far 
as we know. Imagine him riding in his car, splashing 
through the ocean, and finding suddenly that he had got 
into a prison ; the very water is held above him, his horse’s 
hoofs are getting too cold to move, and to his astonishment 
the whole team become statues, and even he, the king, can- 
not control this new element, ice. Imagine him coming to 
Olympus and telling this wonderful tale, whilst Mercury 
said “ You are confined in your movements; indeed I never 
heard before of your going outside the Pillars of Hercules. 
I am accustomed to go far, and in my movements among 
the stars I have come among similar stiffening of far finer 
matter than water, namely, that which flows in universal 
space. The messengers of the spheres have moved in the 
space as unconscious of the existence of anything present 
