d:--

First. The current explanation of the existence of Matter is that it was
created by an external agency. Mr. Spencer's lucid statement of the way
in which Matter has been proved indestructible does not go far enough.
Where he stops, logic might justly pronounce the whole procedure a
fallacious one, a begging of the whole question at issue. The binding
force of the whole argument rests upon a rational principle here
overlooked by Mr. Spencer, the principle of sufficient cause. The
chemist in making the experiment found that certain substances
counterbalanced a given weight; after combustion, the products
counterbalanced the same weight. If the weight did not change during the
experiment, then no matter had been destroyed. The weight is believed
not to have changed, because it existed under ordinary and quiescent
conditions: which, in view of past race experience, rendered it
extremely improbable that any force sufficient to vitiate the result had
come into play during the experiment. _The absence of a sufficient cause
to change the weight_, is, then, the critical point of the argument, and
the perfect trust of the mind in the principle of sufficient cause
forces us to the conclusion that Matter is indestructible.

What has really been accomplished, however, by the experiment? I do not
object to the statement that Matter is indestructible, but the meaning
of this explicitly stated, is that in the light of the present knowledge
of the race, we have experimented with Matter under certain extreme
conditions--some chemical changes seeming, at first glance, to
annihilate it--and have not been able to destroy it, therefore, Matter
is indestructible. While this is true to an extent which preserves the
integrity of the foundation for _our_ Science and _our_ Philosophy, it
is at the same time consistent with the hypothesis that a Being
surpassing man in intelligence and power, may be able to convert Matter
into a not-matter--from the standpoint of present definitions of Matter
and Space--quantitatively correlated with it, or _vice versa_; and this
statement of the case harmonizes Science and Religion. Now, what from
the point of view of Science Mr. Spencer accepts as indestructibility,
is identical with what Religion means when it affirms self-existence,
and as he has demonstrated to his own satisfaction that self-existence
in the abstract is an illegitimate conception, a conception of what by
its very nature is unknowable,