em that thrills and guides them? Their minutest
organs must be composed of molecules, atoms, ions and electrons
inconceivably smaller than are the organs themselves.

Is there any god in a celestial field who could care for the movements
which occur in the molecules constituting a hundredth part of a drop of
water, not to speak of those which occur in the bodies of its myriads of
inhabitants? And what shall we say of all the inorganic and organic
movements in a small cup of whole drops of water, let alone those of a
great ocean of them?

But why go further into this subject? Is not the utter childishness of
the orthodox representative of a supernaturalistic interpretation of
religion, who credits his god with the governance of the motions
occurring in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of this globe,
leaving out of account those of its solar system, and of other systems
which constitute the universe, sufficiently manifest?

If you say that the motions which issue in the phenomena of the universe
are regulated by a law which was once for all willed by the god of the
Christian interpretation of religion, I ask why the law should be
credited to the willing of this god rather than to that of the god of
Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic interpretation.

Newton took the first of the six initiatory steps in the long way which
led to the conclusion that the universe is self-existing,
self-sustaining and self-governing, by showing that all the movements of
the solar systems were necessarily what they have been by reason of a
matter-force law, gravitation. This discovery is the most momentous
event in the whole history of mankind.

Laplace took the second step by showing that the cosmic nebulae contain
within themselves all the potentialities necessary to the formation of
solar systems.

Lavoisier took the third step by showing that the matter which enters
into the constitution of the universe is an eternality.

Mayer took the fourth step by showing that the force which enters into
the constitution of the universe is an eternality.

Darwin took the fifth step by showing that the protoplasm contains all
the potentialities of every form of physical and degree of psychical
life from the moneron to man; that all representatives of both the
vegetable and animal kingdoms, including man, are related and so on a
level as to their origin and destiny, and that the different species are
the natural results of the n