Not that science is debarred from studying the external
mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from
investigating an organism which she cannot put together. But in tracing
back the history of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself,
on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and, on the other, that
it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural."
Now it is obvious that we have here no real argument, since it is obvious
that science can never be in a position to assert that atoms, the very
existence of which is hypothetical, were never "made by any of the
processes we call natural." The mere fact that in the universe, as we now
know it, the evolution of material atoms is not observed to be taking place
"by any of the processes we call natural," cannot possibly be taken as
proof, or even as presumption, that there ever was a time when the material
atoms now in existence were created by a supernatural cause. The fact
cannot be taken to justify any such inference for the following reasons. In
the first place, assuming the atomic theory to be true, and there is
nothing in the argument to show that the now-existing atoms are not
self-existing atoms, endowed with their peculiar and severally distinctive
properties from all eternity. Doubtless the argument is, that as there
appear to be some sixty or more elementary atoms constituting the raw
material of the observable universe, it is incredible that they can all
have owed their correlated properties to any cause other than that of a
designing and manufacturing intelligence.
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