Of what nature are the ideas which Macvicar was so sure would be unpopular? In compiling from his writings, such are selected as seem to be the best, toward elucidating the mysteries which lie in the operation of the laws governing the universal ether, so far as his hypotheses carried him. If matter without form preceded the creation of vitality, "it is only when the principle of life had been given," says Charpignon, "that the intrinsic properties of atoms were compelled, by the law of affinities, to form individualities; which, from that moment, becoming a centre of action, were enabled to act as modifying causes of the principle of life, and assimilate themselves to it, according to the ends of their creation." Here is a conjecture, to start with, that it will be well to remember; for, as in the hypotheses of Macvicar and the demonstrations of Keely, the law of assimilation is made the pivot upon which all turns, "providing at once for the free and the forced, at once for mind and for matter, and placing them in a scientific relationship to one another." This law Macvicar calls the "cosmical law," because to it alone, ever operating under the eye and fulfilling the design of the great Creator who is always and in all places immanent to His creation, an appeal is ever made. By this law a far greater number of the phenomena of nature and the laboratory can be explained than have been otherwise explained by scores of laws which are frankly admitted to be empirical. Surely this is no slight claim for this law to be studied, with a view to its acceptance or rejection. To repeat, this law is to the effect that every individualized object tends to assimilate itself to itself, in successive moments of its existence, and all objects to assimilate one another. The ground of it is, that the simple and pure substance of creation, has for its special function to manifest the Creator; and consequently to assimilate itself to His will and attributes, in so far as the finite can assimilate itself to the Infinite. Hence it is, in its own nature, wholly plastic or devoid of fixed innate properties, and wholly assimilative, both with respect to its own portions or parts and to surrounding objects, as well as to its position in space, and, in so far as it is capable, to the mind of the Creator. Thus, there immediately awake, in the material elements, individuality and the properties of sphericity, elasticity, and inertia, along with a tendency to be assimilated as to place, or, as it is commonly called, reciprocal attraction. Hence, in the first place, the construction in the ether, or realm of light, of groups of ethereal elements, generating material elements. Hence, secondly, a tendency in the material elements, when previously distributed in space, to form into groups, in which their ethereal atmospheres may become completely confluent; while their material nuclei, being possessed of a more powerful individuality than ethereal elements,