Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/250

 matter and its gases are denied, the power to organize must be put in the preëxisting unorganized matter: thus the forces of electricity share the common fate of being regarded as inherent in gross matter, or of being relegated to the regions of the unknown; for if the position is not in all points held, materialism with its self-derived superstructure of false reason and conclusion must fall.

Again, to allow that there are ethereal substances distinctly superior to grosser matter from which matter was derived and wherein its forces originate, is contrary to Evolution, for Evolution does not derive creation from superior things working downward to the end that they may proceed upward, but from the lowest kind of matter struggling upward.

Though it is not the purpose here to explain the particulars of the phenomena of electricity, sufficient may be stated to indicate what electricity is, and something of its nature in general may be given.

All experiments show that electricity is the subject, and grosser matter the object, necessitating that it be something apart from the object of its action. Electricity is as a cause of which its manifestations in grosser matter are effects. Electrical apparatus is made as if electricity were