Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/221



failure to discern the degrees of matter, and the consequent confounding of matter with its modes of motion, have prevented materialistic scientists from distinguishing and clearly defining natural forces. With the more recent development of materialistic reasonings, there has grown up a more strenuous denial of the existence of higher and lower forms of matter, and as a consequence there is an increased endeavor to explain all forces as the inherent properties of the one grossest form of matter. If the forces are of so high a character that the assignment of them to some form of ponderable matter is too absurdly preposterous, then they are relegated to the realm of the unknown or of the unknowable. Hence as materialistic science has become devel-