said also "Let the earth bring forth the herb yielding seed, and the living creature after his kind," and "let us make man." The agency employed by this Almighty Being that sustains inorganic bodies, therefore,— that gives them characters, and qualities, and powers of their own, is the same which we trace up into the delicate and sensitive organization of vegetable life, the more exquisite perfection of animal bodies, and the most elaborate concentration of Divine skill in the formation of man.

The same immaterial substances are identified as alike engaged in the production of the qualities as well as the phenomena displayed in every visible thing; and that circumstance which would appear to mark the distinction of one class of bodies from another, such as the animate from the inanimate, gives the superiority to those bodies which manifest a capacity to receive or treat with the greater number of these spirits: hence we have inorganic bodies treating with those spirits which cause light, heat, electricity, &c., and that in different degrees; and we have organic bodies treating not only with these, but with still higher spirits-viz. those of life, of man, and of angels, which produce the phenomena and powers of those beings they animate.

CHAPTER III.

THE RATIONAL AND PHYSICAL PROOF OF THE REAL EXISTENCE OF MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL SUBSTANCES RENDERED CERTAIN BY THE INVESTIGATION OF THE QUALITIES THESE UNITED SUBSTANCES PRODUCE, AND THE GENERAL PHENOMENA CONSEQUENT UPON THEM.

Ir has already been stated and proved that there is no positive means of ascertaining the real nature of the primary material elements of matter; and the same observation is applicable to the primary immaterial elements of matter. We know nothing of the abstract nature of either; so that we are totally ignorant of the primary cause, either of the one or of the other, beyond what we learn from revelation, that they both proceed out from God, who is their Great First Cause. We are nevertheless most certainly assured of their existence, both from this source and also from certain known effects that may be clearly traced to them. We are assured, also, that a wide difference characterizes these two kinds of entity, a difference we deduce from the very wonderful qualities and phenomena their combined influence produces. It is not difficult to detect these qualities, for they are distinguishable from the uncombined spirits and material substances, as well as

from the union these two kinds of entity form in the natural creation.

The different Qualities defined and distinguished from Modes of Action, by which a new Theory of Light is given.

The qualities of uncombined materiality are specific ponderosity and indivisibility. This ponderosity is independent of the magnetic influence.

The qualities of uncombined immateriality are indivisibility and omnipresence, as far as regards the created universe.

These two entities blend their powers in created union, in order to produce those qualities we observe in the natural bodies around us; and, thus formed, they present a surface for the operation of the same spirits again upon them in their new form. These operations I term phenomena or modes of action; and such are light, heat, and electricity. When these phenomena take place, it is then implied that, first of all, the two entities are united, as in creation; and, when so united, the uncombined spirits are brought to bear upon their different surfaces.

The shape, colour, consistence, divisibility, &c. of created bodies are permanent, and may be called the passive results, or qualities resulting from the simple union of the two entities; while light, heat, electricity, &c. may be called the active results, or phenomena proceeding out of the operation of the uncombined spirits upon created matter.

To illustrate this more fully by an example: What I would define to be the active results of the application of the uncombined spirits to created matter, is that state of things which is present to the senses so long as the causes producing them are operating or are intact. Thus, combustion is the result of the spirit of heat when applied to created matter in which are embodied the primary elements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as we see them united in the vegetable and animal structures; so that these created bodies are resolved into their primary elements. Light is a phenomenon similarly explained, but differing in the degree of uncombined spirits on the one hand, and the nature of the created matter on the other. These active results, which pass away with the removal of the cause producing them, should not be confounded with those durable qualities of all bodies, colour, shape, &c., I have termed passive, and which continue to manifest these qualities under all circumstances, where the particles of the body are not relatively altered either by mechanical or chemical agency. Thus, if I put the leaves and flower of the nymphæa alba (white water-lily) and the tradescantia virginica (common spider-wort), both together under the air-pump in vacuo, by which I remove them from the temporary contact of the uncombined entities, no alteration will take place in the colour or shape of the several leaves and flowers; but the blue will continue blue, the white white, and the green green, because these colours are here formed permanently by the bringing together of the two entities in

constituting them created bodies: and until those created bodies, whether organic or inorganic, are broken up by decomposition, their colours will remain independently of the uncombined entity, whether material or immaterial, with which they may or may not be in contact but the active phenomena have need that these uncombined entities be present, to develope them; and, therefore, when they are withdrawn, they cease. Of such a character is light. The efficient causes of light do not produce a luminous appearance till they come in contact with material created matter. Those efficient causes, we clearly know, have a distinct entity of existence, by the identical effects produced by them upon created matter. They should therefore be distinguished from light, or their combined effect, by a suitable name, as caloric has been partly separated by chemists from heat, which is the result of the union of the spirit of heat with material substance. Chemists acknowledge this caloric to be latent or imperceptible under certain conditions of matter, but they do not appear to have regarded it even in this position as a spiritual substance. Dr. Henry speaks of non-luminous caloric, as it has been called, or, as I call it, the immaterial spirit of heat. There can be no meaning in the term invisible light or latent heat; for light is not light unless it is visible, nor is heat heat unless it can be felt by the senses, and that implies the application of the two different entities in the first instance. Neither the qualities nor the phenomena, then, which belong to material or to spiritual entities, or to the two in con

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