By the train of thought pursued in the last chapter, we were led to the conclusion, not, indeed, that matter has no existence, but that its nature or constitution is altogether different from what is commonly supposed. The difference thus discovered does not, however, imply any corresponding difference with respect to the properties--_sensible_ properties, as they are commonly called--whereby matter affects the senses. Equally, whether matter be, in all and each of its various species, inanimate, inert, passive substance, or a combination of self-acting forces--equally whether it be the author or merely the subject of whatever activity it manifests, that activity is equally manifested in certain sequences which are as unvarying as if they were prescribed by inexorable and irresistible laws, and which, indeed, by a convenient, though exceedingly treacherous metaphor, are usually styled laws--laws of Nature when spoken of collectively, laws of attraction, repulsion, gravitation, motion, heat, light, and the like, when separately referred to. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, however closely we pry, into whatever depths of infinity we peer, we observe the most perfect harmony between structure and law, law moulding structure and structure utilising law. Afar off we descry systems upon systems, solar and sidereal, like sand upon the sea-shore for multitude, and every individual orb thereof rotating or revolving in strictest accordance with inflexible mathematical principles, and evidently owing to the previous influence of those same principles its characteristic configuration. Near at hand we discern organic forms innumerable, each with its own special arrangement of component parts admirably apt for the performance in ordinary circumstances of special functions, admirably, as circumstances change, accommodating itself by corresponding changes for continuing the same or undertaking other and equally appropriate functions, nor merely performing them all in despite of the restraints imposed by law, but availing itself of those very restraints as means and aids for their performance. Where so much aptness is, adaptation surely must have been: where arrangement is so plainly conducive to ends, the ends must surely have been foreseen, and the arrangement effected by design and according to preconceived plan. And there cannot have been design without a designer or designers: the plan cannot but have had its author or authors: nor could the plan have been executed without an artificer or artificers. Author or authors, too, artificer or artificers, be the same singular or plural, must have possessed, individually or collectively, not less of wisdom, power, and goodness than are displayed by the finished work. Now of each of these attributes, the amount to which the aspect of the universe bears witness, albeit not infinite, inasmuch as the universe is not without imperfections, is yet indefinite; as plainly without measure as the universe is without bounds.