On a Foundation for Religion (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from On a Foundation for Religion

Further, the order of the world seems to us not a thing conferred, but inherent and necessary. If matter were essen tially inert and forceless, and once so existed, it would be a natural supposition that the wonderful combinations of ma terial particles in the crystalline and vegetable and higher orders of being resulted from the controlling hand of a superior Intelligence. But this is a gratuitous and un founded conception. Matter is attended with forces of various kinds, and is perhaps in the last analysis itself force, that needs only certain conditions to enable it to manifest its active power. And these forces we regard as competent to the production of all the varied phenomena of the world; and as we must think of them as always existing, we have no occasion to suppose that they had an author, or were consti tuted or endowed so that they might produce their results. The smooth pebble we find on the beach cannot be other than smooth the crystal is due to the co-operation of forces that could issue in no other than just these regular forms.

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