A

In regard to the constitution of matter, the neuclus of it as it were which as yet no power of the imagination can enable us to conceive of as absent therefrom, I will here express an idea which just occurs to me, and enables us, I think, to remove a great part of that difficulty we now experience in forming a conception of force without a material, a solid something as it were, to give body to it.

Taking the fruitful idea of the similarity of world systems to chemical compounds as regards the motions involved; and the similarity again in this respect of the structure of these compounds to that of our so termed elementary molecules as manifested to us by chemical researches; I would suppose that each molecule itself is composed of a system of entities, every one of which has a motion of its own; these subdivisions of the hypothetical elementary molecule I again imagine to be in their turn divided, and that each further subdivision of it has a proper inter-motion of its own, and so on ad infinitum.

Thus I am able to conceive of a maximum, almost an infinity of force, with a minimum, or an infinitely little of what we at present must think of as a solid.

Thus if we must conceive of a solid at all, that is of something without inter-motion, we have it as a something we may never hope to find, a point as it were, ever receding as we attempt to approach it.

We can look upon matter practically as force infinitely intervolved, solid congeries of force. By such conceptions I think we are raised, besides, to form truer ideas of what we term matter than we can now; and so we are put on the way to consider what I believe is correct, that this world is more of a spirit-world than we now hold it to be; that it has an infinitely higher status than we now believe it to have; and that it has a nearer bond of union with God than a lifeless motionless inert mass can be supposed by us to have.