Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/430

414 Divisibility and Incompressibility of Matter. But, if, in these cases, Mr. Martineau holds that a necessity in thought implies an answering necessity in things, why does he refrain from saying the like in other cases? Why, if he tacitly asserts it in respect of space-relations and the statical attributes of Body, does he not also assert it in respect of the dynamical attributes of Body? The laws conformed to by that mode of force now distinguished as "energy" are as much necessary to our thought as are the laws of space-relations. The axioms of Mechanics lie on the same plane with the axioms of pure Mathematics. Now, if Mr. Martineau admits this, as he cannot but do—if he admits, as he must, the corollary that there can be no such manifestation of energy as that displayed in the motion of a planet, save at the expense of equivalent energy which preëxisted—if he draws the further necessary corollary that the direction of a motion cannot be changed by any action, without an equal reaction in an opposite direction on something acting—if he bears in mind that this holds not only of all visible motions, celestial and terrestrial, but that those activities of Body which affect us as secondary properties are also known only through other forms of energy which are equivalents of mechanical energy—and if, lastly, he infers that none of these derivative energies can have given to them their characters and directions, save by preexisting forces, statical and dynamical, conditioned in special ways—what becomes of that "realm of a Divine originality" which Mr. Martineau describes as remaining within the realm of necessity? Consistently carried out, his argument implies a universally-inevitable order, in which volition can have no such place as that he alleges.

Not pushing Mr. Martineau's reasoning to this conclusion, so entirely at variance with the one he draws, but accepting his statement just as it stands, let us consider the solution it offers us. We are left by it without any explanation of Space and Time; we are not helped in conceiving the origin of Matter; and there is afforded us no idea how Matter came to have its primary attributes. All these are tacitly assumed to exist uncreated. Creative activity is represented as under the restrictions imposed by mathematical principles, and as having for datum (mark the word) a substance which, in respect of certain characters, defies modification. But surely this is not an interpretation of the mystery of things. The mystery is simply relegated to a remoter region, respecting which no inquiry is to be made. But the inquiry must be made. After every such solution there arises afresh the question, What are the origin and nature of that which imposes these limits on creative power? what is the primary God which dominates over this secondary God? For, clearly, if the "Omnipotent Architect himself" (to use Mr. Martineau's somewhat inconsistent name) is powerless to change the "material datum objective" to him, and powerless to change the conditions under which it exists, and under