etermine the _character_ of the desire--the manner in which it
would, naturally, be manifested; in other words, being called upon to
conceive a probable law, or _modus operandi_, for the return; could not
well help arriving at the conclusion that this law of return would be
precisely the converse of the law of departure. That such would be the
case, any one, at least, would be abundantly justified in taking for
granted, until such time as some person should suggest something like a
plausible reason why it should _not_ be the case--until such period as a
law of return shall be imagined which the intellect can consider as
preferable.

Matter, then, irradiated into space with a force varying as the squares
of the distances, might, _a priori_, be supposed to return towards its
centre of irradiation with a force varying _inversely_ as the squares of
the distances: and I have already shown[3] that any principle which will
explain why the atoms should tend, according to any law, to the general
centre, must be admitted as satisfactorily explaining, at the same time,
why, according to the same law, they should tend each to each. For, in
fact, the tendency to the general centre is not to a centre as such, but
because of its being a point in tending towards which each atom tends
most directly to its real and essential centre, _Unity_--the absolute
and final Union of all.

[3] Page 44.

The consideration here involved presents to my own mind no embarrassment
whatever--but this fact does not blind me to the possibility of its being
obscure to those who may have been less in the habit of dealing with
abstractions:--and, upon the whole, it may be as well to look at the
matter from one or two other points of view.

The absolute, irrelative particle primarily created by the Volition of
God, must have been in a condition of positive _normality_, or
rightfulness--for wrongfulness implies _relation_. Right is positive;
wrong is negative--is merely the negation of right; as cold is the
negation of heat--darkness of light. That a thing may be wrong, it is
necessary that there be some other thing in _relation_ to which it _is_
wrong--some condition which it fails to satisfy; some law which it
violates; some being whom it aggrieves. If there be no such being, law,
or condition, in respect to which the thing is wrong--and, still more
especially, if no beings, laws, or conditions exist at all--then the
thing can_not_ be wrong and consequ