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.

[25] It may here be observed that the above discussion would not be
affected by the view of Professor Clifford and others, that natural law is
to be regarded as having a subjective rather than an objective
significa