Lucretius cut the knot by quitting the domain of physics
altogether, and causing the atoms to move together by a kind of
volition.

Was the instinct utterly at fault which caused Lucretius thus to
swerve from his own principles? Diminishing gradually the number of
progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one 'primordial form;' but
he does not say, so far as I remember, how he supposes this form to
have been introduced. He quotes with satisfaction the words of a
celebrated author and divine who had I gradually learnt to see that it
was just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe He created a
few original forms, capable of self-development into other and needful
forms, as to believe He required a fresh act of creation to supply the
voids caused by the action of His laws.' What Mr. Darwin thinks of
this view of the introduction of life, I do not know. But the
anthropomorphism, which it seemed his object to set aside, is as
firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with the
creation of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness here. Two
courses and two only are possible. Either let us open our doors
freely to the conception of creative acts, or abandoning them, let us
radically change our notions of Matter. If we look at matter as
pictured by Democritus, and as defined for generations in our
scientific text-books, the notion of conscious life coming out of it
cannot be formed by the mind. The argument placed in the mouth of
Bishop Butler suffices, in my opinion, to crush all such materialism
as this. Those, however, who framed these definitions of matter were
but partial students. They were not biologists, but mathematicians,
whose labours referred only to such accidents and properties of matter
as could be expressed in their formulae. Their science was mechanical
science, not the science of life. With matter in its wholeness they
never dealt; and, denuded by their imperfect definitions, 'the gentle
mother of all' became the object of her children's dread. Let us
reverently, but honestly, look the question in the face. Divorced
from matter, where is life? Whatever our faith may say, our knowledge
shows them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every
cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious control of Mind by Matter.

On tracing the line of life backwards, we see it approaching more and
more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length
to those o