following as an argument: "What has no end can have no beginning. What cannot be destroyed can also not be created. Matter cannot be destroyed, and consequently cannot be created; it is without end, and therefore likewise without beginning is eternal." But what right can any person have to assume that "what has no end can have no beginning"? The words I have just quoted may have no end, but certainly they had a beginning; they may be eternal a parte post although they were not eternal a parte ante, but originated with Dr Löwenthal on a definite day not many years ago. The assertion that "matter cannot be destroyed" needs proof, yet receives none. There is no warrant for saying more than that matter cannot be destroyed by natural powers and processes. There can be no warrant, therefore, for inferring more than that matter cannot be created by natural powers and processes. But this inference is scarcely worth the trouble of drawing. It is unnecessary to take any roundabout way to arrive at so easily accessible a truth as that matter cannot create or destroy itself. But the gulf between this plain truth and the assertion that matter cannot be created or destroyed is immense, although materialists have pretended to identify them, being unable to find a passage from the one to the other.

Büchner, Moleschott, and some other material

ists, teach that physical science has proved that matter is absolutely incapable of increase or diminution, creation or annihilation. Physical science has done nothing of the kind. It refuses to draw absolute conclusions. It carefully abides within the conditions of experience and experiment. It certifies that matter is undestroyed by any of the processes of nature or any of the arts of man, and it infers that what has not destroyed it in the past will not destroy it in the future. It disowns, however, the inference that matter cannot be destroyed or created even by infinite power. It cannot afford so glaringly to violate the laws of logic. It does not pretend to be able to tell what infinite power can do, and still less what it cannot do.

The assertion which Büchner and Moleschott erroneously represent as a generalisation of science, Mr Herbert Spencer far more erroneously pronounces "an à priori cognition of the highest order." Of course, neither this nor any other cognition of matter is an à priori cognition even of the lowest order. Matter is only known à posteriori, and as essentially contingent. No number of the uniformities of experience relative to the nature and properties of matter has been shown to produce one of those absolute uniformities of thought which are entitled to be called necessary or à priori truths. We may not be able to conceive a process of creation, the manner in

which the quantity of matter might be absolutely increased, nor a process of annihilation, the manner in which the quantity of matter might be absolutely diminished, but we have no difficulty in conceiving that there should be more or less matter in the universe than there is. It requires no great stretch of imagination to suppose the whole of empty space filled with matter, or no matter at all in space. He who denies that one can truly think the quantity of matter to be increased or diminished-that one can believe that matter has been created or that it will be annihilated-has allowed his reason to be too much influenced by the impressions of sense, and has signally confused empirical generalisation with necessary truth.

The reason most commonly given for regarding matter as eternal is that its creation is inconceivable. Is, then, creation inconceivable? Not in the sense of essentially unthinkable,-not in the sense that a centreless circle or triangular square cannot be conceived, not in the only sense which would fix creation down as impossible. Is it even inconceivable in the sense of necessarily unimaginable by the human mind? It may be so. Perhaps the mind of man with its present faculties could not be made to comprehend the nature of an act of creation. But we have no right to affirm that such is the case. Its proof would, in fact, require the very knowledge which is pronounced to be

unattainable. If the mind cannot prove creation to be inherently absurd or self- contradictory, it cannot be entitled to pronounce it unknowable; for it knows no other unknowable than the absurd, and it can have no right to affirm anything to be unknowable which it does not know to be so. To know anything to be unknowable is a self-contradiction, unless by the unknowable is meant merely the self-contradictory. We certainly know far too little about the nature of matter-if there be any matter except the manifestation of force to mindto assert that we could not be made to understand its creation. We are merely entitled to say that we do not understand it, and cannot understand it until our knowledge of the nature of matter is greatly increased. The inconceivability of creation is, in fact, no real unthinkableness, but the natural effect of a weakness of imagination which is amply explained by inexperience and ignorance. It is no reason whatever for setting aside the arguments urged by the theist in favour of the belief in creation. The materialist himself believes in a multitude of facts which are in the same sense equally inconceivable.

It may be remarked, in the next place, that materialism is inconsistent with its own theory of knowledge. It implies that all knowledge is obtained through the bodily organs of sense; that we know nothing except what our senses tell us ;

But is eternity

that the limits of sensible experience are the limits of knowledge. Yet it starts, and necessarily starts, with assertions manifestly at variance with this doctrine. It affirms either the existence of atoms or the infinite divisibility of matter. Have atoms ever been reached by any sense? No, they are inaccessible to sense. Can sense prove the infinite divisibility of matter? No; the very notion of sense possessing such a power is absurd. Then, matter is affirmed to be eternal. an object of sense? Has any materialist seen or touched eternity? Has any creature ever had an eternal sensation? Again, no. The very men who assert that matter is eternal are found at other times assuring us that we have no idea of eternity, on the ground that all our knowledge is derived from sensation. What sort of system is it, however, which is thus inconsistent and self-contradictory at its very foundation? Surely it is one little entitled to be considered either satisfactory or scientific.

Again, materialism, as I have already indicated, has no reasonable account to give us of force. It is not required, of course, to give us an account of the absolute nature of force in itself. Force is known only through its effects only from experience. More, therefore, is not asked from materialism than that it shall give an intelligible, non-contradictory view of the relation of force to