set in motion, all motionless bodies held at rest; by it the infinitesimal atom is held an atom and the mass is held concrete, vapory moisture overspreads the land, light and heat animate senseless substance; by it forms of matter change, rocks grow and dissolve, mountains are made and unmade, the ocean heaves and swells, the eternal hills pulsate, the foundations of the deep rise up, and seas displace continents.

One other thing we know, which with the first comprises all our knowledge,—Matter. Now force and matter are interdependent, one cannot exist without the other; as for example, all substance, unless held together—which term obviously implies force—would speedily dissolve into inconceivable nothingness. But no less force is required to annihilate substance than to create it; force, therefore, is alike necessary to the existence or non-existence of matter, which reduces the idea of a possible absence of either force or matter to an absurdity; or, in other words, it is impossible for the human mind to conceive of a state of things wherein there is no matter, and consequently no force.

Force has been called the soul of nature, and matter the body, for by force matter lives and moves and has its being.

Force like matter, is divisible, infinitely so, as far as human experience goes; for, though ultimates may exist, they have never yet been reached; and it would seem that all physical phenomena, endlessly varied and bewildering as they may appear, spring from a few simple incomprehensible forces, the bases of which are attraction and repulsion; which may yet, indeed, derive their origin from One Only Source. In the morphological and geometrical displays of matter these phenomena assume a multitude of phases; all are interactive and interdependent, few are original or primary,—for example, heat and electricity are the offspring of motion which is the result of attractive and repulsive force.

What is force and what matter, whether the one is the essence of a self-conscious Creator and the other his handiwork, or whether both are the offspring of a blind chance or fate—which latter hypothesis is simply unthinkable—it is not my purpose here to consider. I propose in this analysis to take things as I find them, to study the operations rather than the origin of phenomena, to determine what man does rather than what he ought to do, and to drop the subject at the confines of transcendentalism. When, therefore, I speak of force as the life of matter, it no more implies a self-existant materialism in man, than the soul of man implies a pantheistic self-existant soul in nature. Omnipotence can as easily create and sustain a universe through the media of antagonistic and interdependent forces as through any other means, can as easily place nature and man under the governance of fixed laws as to hold all under varying arbitrary dispensations, and can reconcile these laws with man's volition. Wells of bitterness are dug by disputants under meaningless words; scientists are charged with materialism and religionists with fanaticism, in their vain attempts to fathom the ways of the Almighty and restrict his powers to the limits of our weak understanding.

It has been said that, in the beginning, the sixty and odd supposed several elements of matter were in a chaotic state; that matter and force were poised in equilibrium or rioted at random throughout space, that out of this condition of things sprang form and development; regular motion and time began; matter condensed into revolving masses and marked off the days, and months, and years; organization and organisms were initiated and intellectual design became manifest. The infinitesimal molecules, balanced by universal equilibrium of forces, which before motion and time were but chaotic matter and force, were finally supposed to have been each endowed with an innate individuality. However this may be, we now see every atom in the universe athrill with force, and possessed of chemical virtues, and, under conditions, with the faculty of activity. As to the Force behind force, or how or by what means this innate energy was or is implanted in molecules, we have here nothing to do. It is sufficient for our purpose that we find it there; yet, the teachings of philosophy imply that this innate force is neither self-implanted nor self-operative; that whether, in pre-stellar times, infinitesimal particles of matter floated in space as nebulous fluid or objectless vapor without form or consistence, or whether all matter was united in one mass which was set revolving, and became broken into fragments, which were sent whirling as suns and planets in every direction; that in either case, or in any other conceivable case, matter, whether as molecules or masses, was primordially, and is, endowed and actuated by a Creative Intelligence, which implanting force, vitality, intellect, soul, progress, is ever acting, moving, mixing, unfolding, and this in every part and in all the multitudinous combinations of matter; and that all forces and vitalities must have co-existed in the mass, innate in and around every atom.

THEORIES OF NEWTON AND LAPLACE.

Thus, in his great theory of the projectile impulse given to heavenly bodies in counteraction of the attractive impulse, Sir Isaac Newton assumes that both impulses were given from without; that some power foreign to themselves projected into space these heavenly bodies and holds them there. So, too, when Laplace promulgated the idea that in pre-planetary times space was filled with particles and vapors, solar systems existing only in a nebulous state and this nebula set revolving in one mass upon its own axis from west to east, and that as the velocity of this mass increased suns and planets were, by centrifugal force, thrown off and condensed into habitable but still whirling worlds, some impulse foreign to the revolving mass setting it in motion is implied.

With organization and motion, the phases of force, called heat, light, electricity and magnetism, hitherto held dormant in molecules are engendered; composition and decomposition ensue; matter assumes new and varying forms; a progressional development, which is nothing but intelligently directed motion, is initiated, and motion becomes eternal.

It is a well-established principle of physics that force cannot be created or lost. The conservation of force is not affected by the action or energies of moving bodies. Force is not created to set a body in motion, nor when expended, as we say, is it lost. The sum of all potential energies throughout the universe is always the same, whether matter is at rest or in motion. It is evident that so long as every molecule is charged with attractive force no atom can drop out into the depths of unoccupied and absolute space and become lost or annihilated; and so long as force is dependent on matter for its perceivable existence, force cannot escape beyond the confines of space and become lost in absolute void.

Not only are forces interdependent, but they are capable of being metamorphosed one into another. Thus intellectual energy invents a machine which drives a steamship across the ocean. This invention or creation of the mind is nothing else than a vitalization or setting at liberty of mechanical forces, and without this vitalization or applied intellectual force such mechanical force lies dormant as in so-called dead matter. Gravitation is employed to turn a water-wheel, caloric to drive a steam-engine, by means of either of which weights may be raised, heat, electricity, and light produced, and these new-created forces husbanded and made to produce still other forces or turned back into their original channels. And so in chemical and capillary action, the correlation of forces everywhere is found.

INTIMACY OF MIND AND MATTER.

Between mind and matter there exists the most intimate