fact that, in the case of such
a hypothesis, mathematicians have not as yet been able to determine the
physical conditions required to originate vorticial motion, we are expected
to infer that no such conditions can ever have existed, and therefore that
every such vortex system, if it exists, is a miracle!

And substantially the same criticism applies to the argument which
Professor Flint adduces--the argument also on which Professors Balfour and
Tait lay so much stress in their work on the _Unseen Universe_--the
argument, namely, as to the non-eternal character of heat. The calculations
on which this argument depends would only be valid as sustaining this
argument if they were based upon a knowledge of the universe _as a whole_;
and therefore, as before, the absence of requisite knowledge must not be
used as equivalent to its possession.

These, however, are the weakest parts of Professor Flint's work. I
therefore gladly turn to those parts which are exceedingly cogent as
written from his standpoint, but which, in view of the strictures on the
teleological argument that I have adduced in Chapters IV. and VI., I submit
to be now wholly valueless.

"How could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent
and eternal? It is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or
constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a
Supreme Mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the English
alphabet produced the plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest
assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. These atoms
might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long
intervals, produce by a chance contact some curious collocation or
compound; but never could they produce order or organisation on an
extensive scale, or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and
adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate
explanation. To believe that these fortuitous and indirected movements
could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and
beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than
has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no
consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance
hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which
materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have
devised, rest on the assumpti