But when we add that in Chapter
IV. of the foregoing essay it has been shown to be within the legitimate
scope of scientific reasoning to conclude that material atoms have been
progressively evolved _pari passu_ with the natural laws of chemical
combination, it is evident that any force which the present argument could
ever have had must now be pronounced as neutralised. Natural causes have
been shown, so far as scientific inference can extend, as not improbably
sufficient to produce the observed effects; and therefore we are no longer
free to invoke the hypothetical action of any supernatural cause.
The same observations apply to Professor Flint's theistic argument drawn
from recent scientific speculations as to the vortex-ring construction of
matter. If these speculations are sound, their only influence on Theism
would be that of supplying a scientific demonstration of the substantial
identity of Force and Matter, and so of supplying a still more valid basis
for the theory as to the natural genesis of matter from a single primordial
substance, in the manner sketched out in Chapter IV. For the argument
adduced by Professor Flint, that as the manner in which the vorticial
motion of a ring is originated has not as yet been suggested, therefore its
origination must have been due to a "Divine impulse," is an argument which
again uses the absence of knowledge as equivalent to its possession.
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