is numerous admirers, has not one sincerer
than myself, should welcome me as a coadjutor, instead of repelling me
as an antagonist.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Archimede, pour tirer le globe terrestre de sa place et le
transporter en un autre lieu, ne demandait rien qu'un point qui fut
ferme et immobile: ainsi j'aurai droit de concevoir de hautes esperances
si je suis assez heureux pour trouver seulement une chose qui soit
certaine et indubitable.--Descartes, _Meditation Deuxieme_.

[33] Lay Sermons, xiv. 'On Descartes' Discourse;' also an article by
Professor Huxley, on 'Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation,' in
'Macmillan's Magazine' for June, 1871.

[34] Article on 'Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation,' in
'Macmillan's Magazine' for 1871, pp. 152 et seq.

[35] The quotations, of which those in the text are abridgments, will be
found in 'Lay Sermons,' xiv. pp. 364-7.

CHAPTER V.

_RECENT PHASES OF SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM._

'Wonder is the basis of worship. That progress of science which is
to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and
numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdroeckh, much as he
otherwise venerates those two latter processes.'--_Sartor
Resartus._

I.

By the train of thought pursued in the last chapter, we were led to the
conclusion, not, indeed, that matter has no existence, but that its
nature or constitution is altogether different from what is commonly
supposed. The difference thus discovered does not, however, imply any
corresponding difference with respect to the properties--_sensible_
properties, as they are commonly called--whereby matter affects the
senses. Equally, whether matter be, in all and each of its various
species, inanimate, inert, passive substance, or a combination of
self-acting forces--equally whether it be the author or merely the
subject of whatever activity it manifests, that activity is equally
manifested in certain sequences which are as unvarying as if they were
prescribed by inexorable and irresistible laws, and which, indeed, by a
convenient, though exceedingly treacherous metaphor, are usually styled
laws--laws of Nature when spoken of collectively, laws of attraction,
repulsion, gravitation, motion, heat, light, and the like, when
separately referred to. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, however closely
we pry, into whatever depths of infinity we peer, we observe the most
perfect harmony between structure and l