They have power to take different shapes with different atoms in crystallization; that is, there is a power in them, conscious or otherwise, that the same bricks shall make themselves into stables or palaces, sewers or pavements, according as the mortar varies.  “No, no,” you cry out; “it is only according as the builder varies his plan.”  There is no need to rehearse these powers much further; though not one-tenth of the supposed innate properties of this infinitesimal infinite have been recited—­properties which are expressed by the words atomicity, quantivilence, monad, dryad, univalent, perissad, quadrivalent, and twenty other terms, each expressing some endowment of power in this in visible atom.  Refer to one more presumed ability, an ability [Page 257] to keep themselves in exact relation of distance and power to each other, without touching.

It is well known that water does not fill the space it occupies.  We can put eight or ten similar bulks of different substances into a glass of water without greatly increasing its bulk, some actually diminishing it.  A philosopher has said that the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen are probably not nearer to each other in water than one hundred and fifty men would be if scattered over the surface of England, one man to four hundred square miles.

The atoms of the luminiferous ether are infinitely more diffused, and yet its interactive atoms can give four hundred millions of light-waves a second.  And now, more preposterous than all, each atom has an attractive power for every other atom of the universe.  The little mote, visible only in a sunbeam streaming through a dark room, and the atom, infinitely smaller, has a grasp upon the whole world, the far-off sun, and the stars that people infinite space.  The Sage of Concord advises you to hitch your wagon to a star.  But this is hitching all stars to an infinitesimal part of a wagon.  Such an atom, so dowered, so infinite, so conscious, is an impossible conception.

But if matter could be so dowered as to produce such results by mechanism, could it be dowered to produce the results of intelligence?  Could it be dowered with power of choice without becoming mind?  If oxygen and hydrogen could be made able to combine into water, could the same unformed matter produce in one case a plant, in another a bird, in a third a man; and in each of these put bone, brain, blood, and nerve in [Page 258] proper relations?  Matter must be mind, or subject to a present working mind, to do this.  There must be a present intelligence directing the process, laying the dead bricks, marble, and wood in an intelligent order for a living temple.  If we do put God behind a single veil in dead matter, in all living things he must be apparent and at work.  If, then, such a thing as an infinite atom is impossible, shall we not best understand matter by saying it is a visible representation of God’s personal will and power, of his personal force, and perhaps knowledge,