Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/46

36 creation from nothing have any special character? Other things bespeak their origin in their lineaments; and, until better advised, we shall continue to think that a creation out of Nothing would look uncommonly like Nothing. If a man born blind were, by an act of imagination or what not, to show himself quite at home in the comprehension of the phenomena of light, we should perhaps be disposed to recognize an analogy to the alleged work of creation; but we are not aware that any such achievement has been recorded. That a great thinker or poet should not always, if ever, understand how thoughts came to group themselves in his mind in any particular way is no difficulty to the evolutionist: he does not pretend to understand all the mysteries of the human organization.

One argument used by Mr. Spencer affected our author, as he tells us, very strangely. As he read he could hardly trust the evidence of his eye-sight; he thought the type must have got topsy-turvy in some strange fashion; he began to distrust the accuracy of the American edition of the philosopher's works, such an extraordinary example did he seem to have before him of "logic run riot." No doubt it was an argument that would not have told very powerfully on a jury; and that might not have brought much light even to the mind of an average judge, as it certainly has been quite lost on that of a distinguished lawyer; but the argument in our humble opinion is a good one, for all that. What Mr. Spencer says, to put it briefly, is that the idea of creation is unthinkable because it implies a relation between something and nothing. What has Mr. Curtis, after recovering from his spasm of astonishment, to say in reply? The first thing he says is that the creation of matter is not inconceivable, "if we adopt the postulate of an infinite Creator." In other words, use certain expressions that formally signify creation out of nothing, and forthwith we have the conception, clear and workable. In the same way, if we want to have the conception of a round square, we only have to say "round square," and presto, there it is! Mr. Curtis wants very badly to know who made the laws that have been "impressed upon matter"? But who knows that any laws have been "impressed upon matter"? Who knows that that is the proper way of expressing the relation between matter and its laws? Does Mr. Curtis know it? We doubt it; or rather we may say that we know that he does not know anything of the kind. By the so-called "laws of matter" are meant simply the properties of matter. Perhaps Mr. Curtis thinks he can conceive of matter apart from its properties, and of the properties apart from matter. Be that as it may, the question of the origin of the properties of matter is plainly a part of the question as to the origin of matter. All that Mr. Spencer says is that there is no use in talking of matter, or anything else, coming out of nothing, seeing that the words, when you press them, will be found void of meaning. When Mr. Curtis says that "the term 'creation,' as used in all modern