Some philosophers, perceiving this, have chosen to reject one of these eternal existences, and, clinging to their difficulty about the creation of matter, have declared the belief in an intelligent Cause to be unnecessary. The question next arises, how matter became moulded into its present forms. According to Leucippus, Democritus, and the Epicurean philosophers, the elements of matter were, in the revolution of ages, by accident, or the laws of an intelligent nature, shaped into their present appearances. This doctrine has found advocates in almost every age. Whether Hume adopted it, it is not easy to say; for his systems were almost as various as the moods of thought in which he sat down to favor the world with his speculations. He now declares that, in an infinite series of ages, matter could not but fall into every possible variety of forms, and that therefore the supposition of intelligence is not needed to account for the most delicate organization; and presently he asserts that "Chance has no place on any hypothesis, sceptical or religious." Again, he supposes a Principle of Order inherent in matter, which, as he says, at once solves all difficulties;" and presently, supposes that "the universe may have been, for many ages, in a continued succession of chaos and disorder;" during which period, we must suppose the principle which he assumes to have suspended itself.

The Epicurean system rests on the assumption that certain active powers are inherent in matter; an assumption which the Theist denies. Assumption and denial are, however, useless where the question must be decided by argument. It is the part of the Theist to prove first, that we know not that matter possesses any active powers; and, secondly, that if it did, we know not that they are eternally and independently its own. All that we know of the question of Power is, that certain consequents regularly follow certain antecedents, and we therefore suppose that a connexion exists between them, but

of the nature of that connexion we are wholly ignorant. It is a universally received principle, that no being can act where it does not exist; and therefore, those who believe in the active powers of matter, are bound to disprove the existence of a vacuum. If the existence of a vacuum be allowed, the question occurs, how the sun and the earth can act on each other where they are not: if it be denied, it remains to be explained how the resistance which matter offers to matter has not been sufficient, in the course of an eternity, to stop the progress of the globe through the regions of space. If a vacuum exists, the power exerted resides in an immaterial being: if a vacuum does not exist, some powers inherent in matter are in opposition to other powers— attraction to repulsion, &c.; while it still remains to be explained how the vis inertia, which all unite in ascribing to matter, was originally, and is perpetually, overcome. It is natural enough that men should be dissatisfied with their ignorance of the connexion between causes and effects, and that their dissatisfaction should prompt them to interpose a something between the antecedent and the consequent, to which they give the name of power but there is nothing in a name; and it has never been shown that there is more meaning in the "inherent powers" of the Atheistic philosophers, than in the pia and 790α of Aristotle. "What is there," says Malebranche, "which Aristotle cannot at once propose and resolve, by his fine words of genus, species, act, power, nature, form, faculties, qualities, causa per se, causa per accidens? His followers find it very difficult to comprehend that these words signify nothing; and that we are not more learned than we were before, when we have heard them tell us, in their best manner, that fire melts metals, because it has a solvent faculty; and that some unfortunate epicure or glutton digests ill, because he has a weak digestion, or because the vis concoctrix does not perform its functions well."

Dr. Crombie offers a brief but satisfactory examination of the cosmogonies which have been invented under this system; all of which are liable to the same objections, and all inconsistent with what knowledge we possess of the properties of matter. La Place's theory is only worthy of more consideration than the rest, from being presented with modesty and diffidence. Having assumed that matter consists of nebulous particles highly attenuated, it is very easy to declare that by one process those particles are conglomerated into planets, and by another into a comet's tail, and so on: but the question is, how came these particles to be nebulous? What originated the various processes? Whence proceeded the powers by which the processes were modified? And yet La Place expressed astonishment and regret that Newton should have considered a presiding Power to have been necessary for the accomplishment of a work which attraction alone is capable of effecting. It would have been no more than reasonable to explain what attraction is, before requiring any mind to assent to its all-sufficiency.

To assume that Chance or Necessity will account for the production of the material universe, is yet more unsatisfactory. What is Chance? What is Necessity? An active power? A substantial existence? A state or mode of existence? Or a conception of the human intellect? If either of the two first, where can we detect their presence? How shall we trace their operation? And how did they originate? If not a substance, how can the existence of eternal substances be modified by them? Again our doubts are met by words mere words.

Supposing, however, that the globe was formed, surrounded with an atmosphere, and supplied with light and heat, by the concourse of atoms conglomerated by chance, how are we to account for organization and life? Does sensation depend on the position of particles? And if it does, has it ever been

produced by any other medium than that of animal operation? Our experience affords as great a certainty as experience can give, that brute matter can be animalized only by animal operation. Whence then arose the first animal? Mr. Hume, following his Epicurean masters, may tell us that with a finite number of elements, all possible combinations must take place in eternity, and may thus imagine that all arrangements are accounted for; but something more than arrangement requires explanation.

"We have to explain how life, sensation, and intellect, originated. No assemblage of atoms, though they should assume, by chance or necessity, the shape of a man, could form a sentient and intelligent being, any more than a human creature can be produced, when the statuary has chiselled his marble from the block.” — Vol. I. p. 175.

The hypothesis, advocated by the author of the Systême de la Nature, that the earth originally possessed a conservative and nutritive power which hatched certain particles into animated beings, may be dispatched with the same reply. What evidence have we of such a power, and by whom or what was it conferred? What has become of it, and why does it not still exist? Mr. Hume's "eternal principle of order" deserves no more consideration. A principle is a beginning, a spring, or cause; so that, according to Mr. Hume, order arose from a cause of order: and this truism, he declares, solves all difficulties! This principle of order he supposes to be an internal, unknown cause; so that it appears all difficulties are not yet solved. "There is no more difficulty," he says, "in conceiving that the several elements, from an internal, unknown cause, may fall into the most exquisite arrangements, than to conceive that their ideas in the great universal mind, from a like unknown cause, fall into that arrangement." Passing over the gross irreverence of this comparison, it may be asked, what those ideas are:

for Mr. Hume is careful to inform us that he dismisses matter and mind as nonentities, retaining only impressions and ideas. These must, with the principle which arranges them, consist of some third substance, which, for aught he could tell, might be Deity. The hypothesis of the Principle of Order is adopted by Sir W. Drummond, the author of “Academical Questions." He, however, asserts the existence of matter, whose primary particles he declares to have been originally precisely similar in all respects, except as to position; and that according to their various modes of motion, is the present diversity in the phenomena of nature. How these particles came to be differently placed, is left to conjecture; as also, how life originated. But we agree with our author that "it is time to dismiss these extravagant cosmogonies, which resemble the dreams of a distempered fancy, agri somnia, more than the grave speculations of a rational and philosophic mind." He asks with great propriety, whether the discordance of these various sceptical hypotheses arises from the "principle of order" so strongly advocated by their authors? If not, perhaps it may be accounted for by Chance, Nature, or Necessity. That truth will be turned up among them, however, appears a very remote contingency.

The theory, advocated by many, that the world has existed from eternity in its present state, is refuted by those advocates themselves when they assert that causes are in operation which will work its destruction. "For, as a system which has been from eternity, must, in its essence or construction, be everlasting, so a system which must come to an end, must have had a commencement. If there be causes now in operation which must ultimately derange our globe, its vegetable and animal beings must have had an origin." If, as recent observations render it highly probable, not to say morally certain, the whole solar system is gradually moving towards the constellation Hercules - if the moon is gradually