sent a transference from the present visible universe to an order of things entirely unconnected with it. 89. This last hypothesis may however be very speedily disposed of if we are to maintain the principle of Continuity. We have seen that one of the requisites for existence is an organ connecting the individual with the past. Now, if we suppose a transference from the present visible universe to an order of things entirely unconnected with it, this will imply. the creation in the future universe, in the case of each individual so transferred, of a set of organs having reference to something entirely different from the universe, in order that each such individual may have the sense of continued existence. But this would be a manifest breach of the law of Continuity. Imagine the utter confusion into which this present universe would be plunged, if a set of inhabitants were transferred into it having a past entirely unconnected with it. Now, a confusion precisely similar would be occasioned by carrying out a transfer according to the hypothesis in question; so that we are able at once to reduce our suppositions to two: the first implying a transference from one grade to another of the visible universe and the second a transference from the visible universe to some other order of things intimately connected with it. 90. In what precedes, we have argued by anticipation that the present visible universe will become effete; but in the following chapters it will be necessary to maintain this assertion by a minute examination of those laws which represent the course of things pursued in the present universe. In other words, we must settle the fitness or unfitness of the present visible universe before we proceed to discuss our second hypothesis. 91. But whether the transfer be supposed to take place in the visible universe, or from it to another intimately connected with it, the subject in either case is one on which we may legitimately employ our reasoning faculties. So far indeed is its subject from being one which it will be utterly and for ever useless to discuss, that it becomes our duty as well as our privilege to make the attempt, in the perfect trust that time will inevitably bring truth with it. We think that this has been too much overlooked by those whom we may term the moderate school of scientific thinkers. Not denying immortality, they have yet shrunk from all attempts to investigate its conditions. We are in hopes that a perusal of this volume will lead these writers to see that the subject is one which may be profitably discussed. CHAPTER 111. THE PRESENT PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; Leave not a rack behind."-SHAKESPEARE, Tempest. “All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, The sun himself must die Before this mortal shall assume His immortality."-CAMPBELL. 92. HAVING in the last chapter briefly indicated the nature of the proposition which we intend to bring forward, we must next study, as a preliminary to further discussion, what science tells us about the present physical universe: what are the general laws to which it is now subject; when and what must have been its beginning; when and what will be its inevitable end. We have been driven into becoming accustomed to the phrase, “the material universe,” which is generally used in a sense absolutely identical with that which we have chosen as our title. We shall soon see that the term is a very inapt one, inasmuch as matter is (though it may sound paradoxical to say so) the less important half of the material of the physical universe. In the present chapter we shall still further restrict ourselves by omitting, as far as possible, any reference to life 69 (even in its lowest aspect), and we likewise defer to a future chapter our account of the more reasonable speculations which have been advanced with regard to the intimate structure of matter and ether. 93. It is only within the last thirty or forty years that there has gradually dawned upon the minds of scientific men the conviction that there is something besides matter or stuff in the physical universe, which has at least as much claim as matter to recognition as an objective reality, though, of course, far less directly obvious to our senses as such, and therefore much later in being detected. So long as men spoke of light, heat, electricity, etc., as imponderables, they merely avoided or put aside the difficulty. When they attempted to rank them as matter,-heat, for instance, as caloric,—they at once fell into errors, from which a closer scrutiny of experimental results would assuredly have saved them. The idea of substance or stuff as necessary to objective existence very naturally arises from ordinary observations on matter; and as there could be little doubt of the physical reality of heat, light, etc., these were in early times at once set down as matter. Fire, in fact (including, it is to be presumed, everything which involved either heat or flame, real or apparent), was in early times one of the four so-called elements. In those days the sun was supposed to be only a great fire; a lightning-flash, an aurora, or a comet, was merely a flame; in other words, the essence of all these was the element fire, or, as it was later called, caloric. The sun, except when he appeared as the spreader of pestilence, was the beneficent fire, as were also some of the planets; the lightning, the comet, even the moon and Saturn, were baleful fires. This endeavour to assign a substantive existence to every phenomenon is, of course, perfectly natural; but on that very account excessively likely to be wrong. Humanum est errare comes with quite as much heartfelt conviction of its truth from the lips of the honest Pagan as from those of the Christian believer; though perhaps its meaning may be considerably less extended in the former than in the latter case. 94. But, before discussing what is that something else' besides stuff which has an objective though not a substantive existence, let us in the first place inquire into the grounds of our belief, that matter itself has a real existence external to us; that, in fact, the so-called evidence of our senses is not a mere delusion. Now, some extreme thinkers write as if they would persuade us that a species of hallucination affects with similar impressions every individual mind, so that, for instance, one man may usefully warn another about a pitfall on a dark road, and so save him from a catastrophe which might otherwise be caused by something which exists, if at all, in the mentor's mind only,- at all events not as yet in that of his pupil; though, if the warning be unheeded, or not given, there will presently be another mind in which the pitfall will certainly exist with startling vividness. But this is altogether repugnant to every conviction which experience (our only guide in such matters) enables us to form; and, in the shape in which we have put it, could hardly be held at all by any reasonable being. Now physical science furnishes us with the following among many other arguments in proof of the reality of the external universe :-Experience of the most varied kind consistently shows us that we cannot produce or destroy the smallest quantity of matter. Exer |