[16] Grammar of Assent, pp. 106, 107.
[17] Throughout these considerations I have confined myself to the positive side of the subject. My argument being of the nature of a criticism on the erroneous inferences which are drawn from the good qualities of our moral nature, I thought it desirable, for the sake of clearness, not to burden that argument by the additional one as to the source of the evil qualities of that nature. This additional argument, however, will be found briefly stated at the close of my [supplementary essay] on Professor Flint's "Theism." On reading that additional argument, I think that any candid and unbiassed mind must conclude that, alike in what it is not as well as in what it is, our moral nature points to a natural genesis, as distinguished from a supernatural cause.
[18] The illustration to which I refer is that of the watershed of a country being precisely adapted to draining purposes. The rivers just fit their own particular beds: the latter occupy the lowest grounds, and get broader and deeper as they advance; pebbles, gravel, and sand all occupy the best teleological situations, &c., &c.
[19] "Order of Nature," by the Rev. Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., &c., 1859, pp. 228-241.
[20] I think it desirable to state that I perceived this great truth before I was aware that it had been perceived also by Mr. Spencer. His statement of it now occurs in the short chapter of First Principles entitled "Relations between Forces." So far as I an able to ascertain, no one has hitherto considered this important doctrine in its immediate relation to the question of Theism.
In using the term "persistence of force," I am aware that I am using a term which is not unopen to criticism. But as Mr. Spencer's writings have brought this term into such general use among speculative thinkers, it seemed to me undesirable to modify it. Questions of mere terminology are without any importance in a discussion of this kind, provided that the terms are universally understood to mean what they are intended to mean; and I think that the signification which Mr. Spencer attaches to his term, "persistence of force," is sufficiently precise. Therefore, adopting his usage, whenever throughout the following pages I speak of force as persisting, what I intend to be understood is, that there is a something—call it force, or energy, or x—which, so far as experience or imagination can extend, is, in its relation to us, ubiquitous and illimitable; or, in other words, that it universally presents the property of permanence. (See, for a more detailed explanation, [supplementary essay,] "On the Final Mystery of Things.")
[21] Hamilton may here be especially noticed, because he went so far as to maintain that the phenomena of the external world, taken by themselves, would ground a valid argument to the negation of God. Although I cannot but think that this position was a conspicuously irrational one for any competent thinker to occupy before the scientific doctrine of the correlation of the forces had been enunciated, nevertheless I cannot lose the opportunity of alluding to this remarkable feature in Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, showing as it does that same prophetic forestalling of the results which have since followed from the discovery of the conservation of energy, as was shown by his no less remarkable theory of causation. (See [supplementary essay] "On the Final Mystery of Things.")
[22] Mr. N. Lockyer's work is now supplying important evidence on these points.—1878.
[23] It will of course be observed that if matter and force are identical, the unification is complete.
[24] Herbert Spencer.