POWER, FORCE AND MATTER:

THEIR DIVERSITY, UNITY, SIMPLICITY AND HARMONY, THE BASIS OF ALL SCIENCE AND ALL KNOWLEDGE.

A Discourse delivered at the Anniversary of the Illinois Natural History Society, at Bloomington, June, 1860:

By J. B. TURNER, President of the Society.

It is well on all subjects, sometimes to recur to fundamental principles and consider to what final results these would carry us, if unsparingly applied to all objects of research or of thought.Especially is this appropriate in our investigations of the Laws of Nature; for, by this method alone, can we know whether our assumed principles are true or false, and what we are to expect in their future application to phenomena still unknown, or but imperfectly apprehended and classified under these general axioms or tryths

The most rigorous application of our assumed axioms to unknown as well as known phenomena, although in one aspect it may be simply theorizing, inasmuch as it may indicate a probable theory of these phenomena, in another aspect it is only a proper testing of the truth or falsehood of these axioms themselves. In either view, however inappropriate it may seem to the mere pedantic smatterer in science, it cannot be uninteresting to the true philoso pher. I have thought, therefore, that it would neither be improper nor unacceptable, on the present occasion, to call the attention of this association to the probable ULTIMATE AND UTTER SIMPLICITY OF NATURE, OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE OF GOD, as a necessary logical consequence of the fundamental axioms of the Baconian Philosophy.

None can be more fully aware of the difficulty of presenting such a subject, than the members of this association; and none can lament my incompetency to the task more deeply than my self'; but with that indulgence which confessed ignorance may always claim from the truly wise, I will endeavor to present an outline

both of my thoughts and of my doubts in a somewhat intelligible form; with less regard to the technical terms and theories of extant science, or the demands of either precision of thought or elegance of style, than to the present necessities of a miscellaneous audience.

What then is the ultimate axiom of the Baconian or Modern Philosophy? It is the assumption of the absolute simplicity of the law of causation-or the doctrine that all effects are produced by simple and not by a complex causation.

This doctrine is based on the observation of the entire simplicity of causation, so far as our knowledge has as yet extended, or the extreme unity and simplicity of those causes which, at all points, are found to underlie and produce the boundless phenomenal variety of the Creator's works. And the philosophic rule, derived from this, is, never to assume but one cause where that is adequate to the result.

Is this fundamental doctrine and its resultant rule, correct? and, if so, SHALL We, DARE we, apply it to all known being and phenomena? But, if not so applicable, it is not, of course, correct, and should be at once abandoned, as untenable; or, at least, should be so far limited and explained, as to indicate, truly, precisely how much we do mean, and what we do not mean, by it. And even if this discourse should have no other use it may provoke thought and incite a more careful scrutiny on this point.

It is self-evident that we know but three generic forms of existence or of being in the Universe of God. To designate these by the old and more common terminology, we should call the first or or lowest in the order, MATTER; the second, the IMPONDERABLE AGENTS, such as light, heat, electricity, etc.; and third, the VOLUNTARY AGENTS, Such as men, animals, beasts, birds, etc. The perceived peculiarity of the first, or of MATTER, is, FORM and its ATTENDANTS; that of the second, is simple FORCE, capacity of producing motion, or tendency toward motion, and its attendants; that of the third class, is POWER of thought and of will, in higher or lower degrees; or, POWER of will and its attendants and results; or, perhaps, better, SIMPLE SELF-MOVING POWER. By a shorter terminology, then, I will name these three generic forms of all known being:

MATTER, producing form, and its attendants;

FORCE, producing motion, and its attendants; and

POWER, producing thought and will, and their attendants and results.

I might then, perhaps, here say,that simple MATTER, FORCE and MIND, include all known things; except that it would be straining the usual signification of mind, to make it embrace all those lower orders of being, which seem to have some power of thought or of will; and it is not clear, to say the least, that any form of voluntary being, belongs to, or results from, mere MATTER and FORCE; though it may be so. For, though this voluntary princi

ple, or POWER, of will or of thought, seems to exist in three distinct forms:-in connexion with reason and conscience, as in the case of moral beings; in connexion with intelligence or thought, in greater or less degrees, as in the higher orders of animal life; and, in connexion with bare instinct, in still lower orders-we still, know nothing about it, except that it is a mere POWER, of some sort, manifesting volition or thought and will just as FORCE is known only as the cause producing motion. But, on the other hand, we can scarce resist the impression, that matter must consist of atoms or elements, though actually known only as the cause of form and its attendants. And thus matter, stripped of its phenomenal adjunct of form, presents itself to us as simple ATOMS; and then we have in the world, only ATOMS, FORCES and POWERSthe one producing, (or, perhaps better, merely presenting or resulting in,) all FORM; the next, producing all motion and change of place or form; and the last producing all thought and will-the great Trinity of Universal Science and Nature-the first, the proximate cause of all form; the second, the proximate cause of all motion or change; and the third, the proximate cause of all thought and all will; and, in its highest manifestations, the great first cause of, or rather power producing, all things-all motion-all change— all matter-all everything. The two first of these, matter and force, belong to the realm of the properly natural, or the realm of natural and necessary causation; the last, or POWER of will belongs to the realm or sphere of the supernatural, and lies, at least so far as we know or can see, wholly outside of the realm of necessary causation, and within the realm of voluntary self-determining, selfcontrolling power-existing, as indeed as do, also, matter and force, under an infinite variety of phenomenal aspects; or, rather, working with infinitely diversified degrees and aspects of power; but ever, still as an original, spontaneous and independent fountain or source of POWER, however small or large; and holding within itself, in its own inherent nature, the cause of its own action; and not, like matter and force, moving only as it is acted upon by some cause from without. But as matter, force, and power or mind, must all alike have an appropriate sphere of action, so also, in each alike, this sphere of action is not the cause of their action. For example: as matter must have space, as its sphere of action, or it cannot exhibit its phenomena of form; and as force must have matter to act upon, as its sphere or occasion of action, or it cannot produce its phenomena of motion, or of tendency toward motion-so this power, this ORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINING and SELF-CONTROLLING POWER of will, or mind, must have its proper sphere or occasion of action, or MATTER to act upon and FORCE to act with, or something to choose and to do, or it cannot exhibit its peculiar phenomenal power. But space is not the cause of power, nor is matter the cause of force, nor are all together the cause of volition or of the action of this POWER of will or mind, but only the instruments or the occasions which render such action possible.

And precisely here, I pause to make my lowest bow to good old Jonathan Edwards and his erudite disciples, and bid them God speed. For it is self-evident that neither matter nor force of any sort, or in any form have any more tendency or even appetency to control mind, or will or POWER, in the true sense of the terms, than space has to control form, or inert matter to control force. And the only answer to the question "what causes this mind, this powER, to act so and so?" which we can give, is simply this: "God made it, not a form, or a force, but a POWER, in its own nature and sphere capable of such action-just as he made force capable of its own natural action upon matter, and matter capable of assuming form in space." In other words, the natural only, or MATTER and FORCE, are governed by laws of causation; but the supernatural, or mind, will, real POWER, is governed only by the laws of volition or the laws of the SUPERNATURAL-which are neither laws of form or of force or of causation, in any such sense as is ever implied in the realm of the natural.

If now we look over the world of sense, we shall find all its infinitely varied and wondrous phenomena, at any given moment, to consist simply of matter, in its various forms and its attendant colors-though color probably belongs to the order of force rather than of matter-and whatever change, either of form, or of size, or place, occurs in these atoms of matter-whether from without or from within-whether of growth or of decay-is the result of some FORCE, astronomical, mechanical or chemical, producing or tending toward motion; and these can no more be changed, without force, producing motion, than there can be power without matter. The question, then, here arises-are these two all-producing, all-embracing elements of all being, and all change in the physical world, simple or complex?-each a unit, in itself, or multiform and varied? It is not enough to say that the books give us a great many kinds of matter, and a great variety of forces; for the question is how do the books know? and on what authority do the books contradict the very axioms, on the basis of which they themselves are professedly written? Is their doctrine of the simplicity of nature, and of causes, to be retained or abandoned? That is the question? If it is to be rigorously retained, then we come, at once, to a view of the utter unity and simplicity of nature, that is most sublime and astounding, and still just what he who knows how simple gravity wheels all suns and spheres and atoms should be prepared to expect and certainly many of our best writers and thinkers admit the possibility, if not the certainty, of this entire simplicity of matter.

It is generally conceded, then, that matter consists of atoms, or, as they are sometimes called, elements; and it is also quite generally supposed that we know of more than one elemental, or ultimate, or atomic, form of matter. But do we know this? or only assume it, without any ground of confidence, and strictly against all our axioms and analogies, derived from other sources? Some

But

have supposed that at least two ultimate or atomic forms of matter must exist, or else there could be no combination and no change, producing all the varied phenomena of the material world. suppose that the ultimate atoms of matter are all one and the sameall, if you please, perfectly regular in their shape, like the eggs of the same bird or fowl or insect; still it is susceptible of mathematical demonstration that the forms into which these ultimate atoms may be piled or congregated, by simply varying the angles of their axis, or their relative distances apart, or both, is absolutely infinite: Thus take the above mentioned form of matter, which we can most easily conceive of, as an illustration-the egg of a fowl. All can perceive that by varying the angles of their incidence, and their relative distances from each other, the forms in which they may be piled or congregated are absolutely infinite, producing as many forms of piles as there can be forms of matter in the universe of God-however many there may be. I shall soon show how FORCE, or the second great agent in nature, acts upon these atoms of matter, to determine all their relative positions and distances apart, in all their possible aggregations and changes. But one element or phase of this universal force is what we call heat; and the universal effect of this form of force, as it is exerted on all the atoms of matter, well illustrates, at this point, my idea. You take solid ice, and apply the force of heat, and you soon have the yielding fluid, water, from the same identical solid atoms. These same atoms, constituting ice, have now, under the application of this new force the force of heat-changed both their form and their color, and appear like quite another substance. Apply still more of this new force of heat to this now melted ice, and you have ærial vapor, with the dew, the cloud, the fog, and the rainbow-all still out of your solid ice. Apply more force of heat still, and you have a form of fiery gas out of your inert and sluggish ice, which whirls armies and navies over continents and oceans-grinds granite mountains to powder, and chews up solid iron bars as a horse chews straw. Apply a little more, still, of this new force of heat to your inert ice, and you have an explosion of burning flames, for which we still lack a descriptive name, and, therefore, call it hot steam--hotter than the flame of gunpowder itself, and so uncontrollable, impetuous, and omnipotent, in its action and effects, that the whole solid globe itself connot restrain or control it. Now, no one supposes that the atoms or elements of the gas, the steam, the fog, the water, and the ice, are different; for we know that they are not, but that these same atoms assume entirely new forms and relations, under this new disposing FORCEor FORCE of HEAT. And precisely similar results follow in the case of all other forms of matter, when subjected to the same force-or force of heat. These very familiar examples show how all possible forms of matter may, at least, be constituted from one and the same kind of ultimate atoms, as easily as from two or more kinds. And until we give up our axiom, as regards the simplicity of causes, it is strict