and should declare oxygen and hydrogen1 to be, at once, the substance, and the life, and the soul of the world; still, the mind obstinately refuses to be content, and demands, with as much pertinacity and eagerness as ever: "But what is the ground and the spring of these two? whence came they? and what is their history? Indeed, the difficulty is quite as real, and may be as great, with two as with two hundred. What is, now, our philosopher's resource? Why now, seeing that investigation has failed, he meditates; and since. the intractable elements baffle the resources of his chemistry, he throws them into the alembic of his imagination. Watching closely he sees, or seems to see, an immensely thin vapor issuing thence, an ether impalpable to every nicest sense, and unrecognizable by Chemistry's subtlest detective police, seen only by the mind. It rises, and, in a twinkling, has spread itself throughout all space. It filleth immensity and inhabiteth eternity, the one primal substance, the great first being, the sole original, eternal, omnipresent, omnificient. Has it any qualities? Not any in particular, but all in general. Is it any definite substance? No, but the mother of substances, and the father. It is Proteus, and becomes anything and everything, not at will, however, but according to necessity-a great sea, brooded over by no spirit, eternally it is breaking into form, and, changing forms, giving forth all things, and, perhaps, receiving again into its infinite bosom all, as they in succession complete the cycle of their fate. In this he finds the reason and the rule, the beginning and the destiny of the universe.

Is there such a thing as carbon? As known to sense, it is compounded of particles; but, as seen by the understanding, each particle is merely but one definite and continuous limitation of the original infinite Energy. A portion of this Energy, in process of its eternal action-effect succeeding cause without end-stands, at the present moment, in this form. It is capable of being anything else. Just now, it is this.

1 See the speculations of Transcendental Chemistry. VOL. XIII. No. 50.

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Again In a different place, do we discover a different thing, and name it-nitrogen? Then we have merely to say In this place the ancient Necessity has worked differently, so that the primal essence has come to wear a different form, and nitrogen is accounted for.

Next, we stumble upon our own soul; and this, too, we discover lying latent in the aboriginal abyss of entity. Thus we go the round of the world, and behold each several thing rise into being, and depart; whereupon, we fold our robe about us, and sit down in peace the world is at our feet. We fear lest we are transgressing our own canon in listening, so patiently, to this philosophy of materialism. But let us contemplate it. The materialist finds the beginning of all things in a certain indescribable hyle or first matter (rather, mother of matter). This, like an immense impalpable sea, is omnipresent; and, being possessed with a multitude of energies, is ever simmering, as it were, and its vibration and its foam is this visible action, appearance, sensation, knowledge, will, which constitute the sensible and intelligible universe; while it is, itself, the one only real, ultimate substance.

The materialist, like all other rational beings, is under the pressure of that relentless question which ever stirs up the mind with its inappeasable cry: Whence all this? and how? what is the beginning? what the unity of the whole? He too lies, in company with all his compeers, under this most stringent intellectual necessity of rising from the great chaos of diversity about him, to the vision of a one original cause and reason. All his philosophy is inadequate, as philosophy it is inept, if it fail of attaining this. He claims that he has attained it; what has he done? Exactly this: He has taken all existing with all possible things, shaken them well together, and then, by the solvent of his imagination, has melted them down into one vast "puddle," in which every specific quality is neutralized by its contraries or correlatives, and all definiteness lost in universal indistinction. Thus, having absolved each thing of all separate and particular character, through intimacy of intermixture with everything

else, he has attained THE ABSolute. This is the great Original, the one First Power. He finds here that unity, cause, essence, and law of all, which reason always demands, and for which all philosophy seeks. Here is, literally, the "solution" of the great problem.

But let us look at this solution a little more closely. It is no unity. An ocean is not a unity, not even though it be of one pure, unmixed element. Here, e. g., is a drop taken from it; and here, is another drop taken from another place, of course; we will say one mile distant from the first. Now look at those drops. Are they one? No, manifestly not one, but two. Are they identical? And is this one that, and is that one this, and is each one both? No, manifestly; but each one is itself alone, and not the other. Are they of the same substance, absolutely the same? Not the same, surely, but only similar, exactly similar. And this is true of all the drops, and all the particles, even of the minutest atoms in all that infinite sea. Undoubtedly. Each particle is itself, and not its neighbor; and no one part whatsoever is identical with any other part whatsoever. And so, this great sea, instead of being an absolute unity, is as complete a diversity as any philosopher need demand for his problem. The ocean is not one, but merely of one sort. It is a multitude, though the multitude are all alike.

When you can take us to the centre of your abysm, and show us there a something which creates each point in this ocean, a unity which establishes and sustains each particle in being and in action, then will you have brought us face to face with a true unity, and have found for us the object of our search. But,

II. This one original of the materialist is not even an ocean of one pure element; it is many elements, or, at the very least, it must be two.

We will grant, for the argument's sake, that all the substances known to chemists might be analyzed, were the manipulators skilful enough, and reduced to two simple elements; also, that from these two a material universe might by possibility have constructed itself. But it is not

conceivably possible that one pure natural element should have worked itself out into the diversity of the physical world. Such mere sameness could not have wrought differences.

If we suppose that, in the beginning, there are two distinct elements, then we may conceive the two, in combining, to form a third; the third, again, with each of the other two, forms a fourth and a fifth; and these, together with their after combinations and their mutual modifications, form a still greater variety of elements, by varied degrees of union and influence, again producing varied degrees and kinds, in endless permutation. Thus, according to a law which might, perhaps, be supposed inherent in the original two, a material universe might be imagined to build itself up.

But, now, instead of this twain, let there be but one pure universal element, and no universe is conceivably possible. From this one nothing whatsoever can be supposed to spring in any one part or place, which does not also spring in every other part or place; that is, there can never be any diversity; and a "universe" is impossible.

The conditions of our problem are, the same thing everywhere, and this everywhere in the same state. Now, what is there anywhere to make a difference? Is it said, there is a law within it, necessitating action and change? But that law is in it all, necessitating in every point the same change; and this infinite sea never loses its dreary monotony. It cannot become worlds. It cannot be the original of even a material universe. Hence, that great ocean into which the materialist melted down the existing multiplicity and variety, so far from being an absolute unity, cannot even be of one sort, but, at the very least, by the necessity of his own argument, contains two distinct elements; elements eternally distinct, and that cannot be supposed to merge and lose themselves in each other; and so, his "one original," in order to be an "original," must be two or more. But,

III. Let us concede to him, temporarily, the privilege of supposing, that he has reached a true unity, a one pure power, which, lying, as it were, underneath the great abyss, has constituted each point and particle of material existence. This is

not a sea, but it makes the sea. And it is a purely natural power. WHAT IS IT?

a.

Whatever it be, one thing is clear, it is not matter. By the very supposition, it is not only deprived of all essential material qualities, such as extension, and the like, but it is definitely set over against matter, as an entity logically anterior to it, and the active originating cause of it. The matter that we know of is its effect, not itself. Extension is not an attribute of itself, but only of its product. This power is not matter, though all matter, and mind, is but this power.

In putting his statement into this shape, therefore, the objector ceases to be a materialist (materia) and becomes, shall we say? a matrist (mater), ascribing the origin of the universe, not to matter, but to a certain nondescript mother of matter, the invention of his own imagination. Having melted the universe down in his furnace, and finding the flux still unmanageable, he has now, by a violent effort, sublimated and concentrated it all into a single mathematical point of pure natural power. From the infinite energy of this punctum, the universe has sprung, mind and matter both. This power, it is claimed, acting under the strict law of necessity, goes forth eternally in action, and each individual thing is thus caused to stand forth in its own place and time.1

1 Even if such an hypothesis could suffice for those existences, which, like this supposed original, are under the law of necessity, it encounters in voluntary beings an insurmountable obstacle. Were it conceded that such a power might be equal to the production of a material universe, yet, when we come to the realm of spiritual energies, its strength is palsied, and it cannot cross the line. This god is, at best, but a god of the valleys; and when we call upon him to ascend the hills, and to enter with us the solemn presence of those mysterious energies who act of their own free will-upon those heights where nature's kings hold their court, then his spell ceases. He falls powerless, crippled and dumb, the instant he touches the other side of the boundary line. Although this point has been already discussed, yet it is so essential that it will bear review.

The universe, it is affirmed, is the product of a Power acting by a natural law, a strict necessity. Then, we reply, are all the products of this Power under the same law, and bound, with equal strictness, by the same necessity (pp. 415, 416). The stream cannot rise higher than its fountain-head. The genus cannot overpass the limits of its kind. By the supposition, there is, in the beginning, but one Power. That Power is of a certain kind, viz. not voluntary and personal,