nto the structure
of the universe is a proof that they have been made fit, and since natural
forces could not have acted on them while not yet existent, a supernatural
power must have created them, and created them with a view to their
manifold uses." Here the inference so confidently drawn would have been a
weak one even were we not able to see that the doctrine of natural
evolution probably applies to inorganic nature no less than to organic. For
the inference is drawn from considerations of a character so transcendental
and so remote from science, that unless we wish to be deceived by a merely
verbal argument, we must feel that the possibilities of error in the
inference are so numerous and indefinite, that the inference itself is
well-nigh worthless as a basis of belief. But when we add that in Chapter
IV. of the foregoing essay it has been shown to be within the legitimate
scope of scientific reasoning to conclude that material atoms have been
progressively evolved _pari passu_ with the natural laws of chemical
combination, it is evident that any force which the present argument could
ever have had must now be pronounced as neutralised. Natural causes have
been shown, so far as scientific inference can extend, as not improbably
sufficient to produce the observed effects; and therefore we are no longer
free to invoke the hypothetical action of any supernatural cause.

The same observations apply to Professor Flint's theistic argument drawn
from recent scientific speculations as to the vortex-ring construction of
matter. If these speculations are sound, their only influence on Theism
would be that of supplying a scientific demonstration of the substantial
identity of Force and Matter, and so of supplying a still more valid basis
for the theory as to the natural genesis of matter from a single primordial
substance, in the manner sketched out in Chapter IV. For the argument
adduced by Professor Flint, that as the manner in which the vorticial
motion of a ring is originated has not as yet been suggested, therefore its
origination must have been due to a "Divine impulse," is an argument which
again uses the absence of knowledge as equivalent to its possession. We are
in the presence of a very novel and highly abstruse theory, or rather
hypothesis, in physics, which was originally suggested by, and has hitherto
been mainly indebted to, empirical experiments as distinguished from
mathematical calculations; and from the mere