f them to some extent, may have been formed from the first. If
Science could go back to the beginning of all things, which it obviously
cannot, it might find the composition already accomplished, and be
compelled to start with it as a given fact--a fact as incapable of
scientific explanation as the existence of matter at all. But, on the
other hand, composition and decomposition is a matter of every-day
experience. Our very food could not nourish us except by passing through
these processes in our bodies; and by the same processes we prepare much
of our food before consuming it. May not Science go back to the time
when these processes had not yet begun? May not the starting-point of
the history of the universe be a condition in which the simple elements
were still uncombined? If Science could go back to the beginning of all
things, might we not find all the elements of material things ready
indeed for the action of the inherent forces which would presently unite
them in an infinite variety of combinations, but as yet still separate
from each other? Scattered through enormous regions of space, but drawn
together by the force of gravitation; their original heat, whatever it
may have been, increased by their mutual collision; made to act
chemically on one another by such increase or by subsequent decrease of
temperature; perpetually approaching nearer to the forms into which, by
the incessant action of the same forces, the present universe has grown;
these elements, and the working of the several laws of their own proper
nature, may be enough to account scientifically for all the phenomena
that we observe. We do not even then get back to regularity. Why these
elements, and no others; why in these precise quantities; why so
distributed in space; why endowed with these properties: still are
questions which Science cannot answer, and there seems no reason to
expect that any scientific answer will ever be possible. Nay, I know not
whether it may not be asserted that the impossibility of answering one
at least among these questions is capable of demonstration. For the
whole system of things, as far as we know it, depends on the perpetual
rotation of the heavenly bodies; and without original irregularity in
the distribution of matter no motion of rotation could ever have
spontaneously arisen. And if this irregularity be thus original, Science
can give no account of it. Science, therefore, will have to begin with
assuming certain f