Look, then, at the striking incongruity. With no explanation of matter without qualities; with no indication of how motion could arise and become rhythmic and infinitely harmonious; with the distinct knowledge that, when the physicist wants to demonstrate matter, he is compelled to do it in terms of motion; and, when he would prove the presence of motion, he can only do it in terms of matter; with all these fetters to our mental movement, and clouds before our eyes, it is argued that, by carrying the discoverable and apparently self-acting affections of matter by motion far enough back, we can explain the origin and structure of the universe. I would repeat, that in such a mental effort, it is vain to seek logical aid from the employment of the word ‘force.’ We have seen that the only scientific idea of force we can ever have, is motion. Motion is the result of ever-varying relations, borne to each other by matter, space, and time. At a given instant a body is here; in a measurable interval after, it is not here, but yonder. ‘Motion’ carries with it no occult constructive power. It is change of place, and no more. Is it not inevitable, then, that the mind should refuse its sanction to the claim, that ‘the problem of the universe’ is solved by these feeble factors? ‘If I were forced,’ writes Professor Huxley, ‘to choose between Materialism and Idealism, I should elect for the latter;’[2] and truly, if our choice must be between them, this is the normal alternative. [Footnote 2: _Fortnightly Review_, December 1886, p. 796.] The loftiest object of human thought is to discover how far the material universe is en expression of supreme unity, of rhythmic activity, and of rational order. But for this, the mind must take a range that transcends, without limit, all physical sequences, laws, phenomena. Taking the broad basis of our consciousness and reasoning faculties, we must _relate_ sequences, _interpret_ phenomena, and, however remotely and imperfectly, endeavour to account for ‘laws.’ But in doing this we must remember that we have pushed our way beyond the last outpost of _physical_ research. We have passed beyond the region where ‘quod erat demonstrandum’ is used. We have threaded our mental path into solitudes where no electrometer will be responsive, no spectroscope analytical, no lens revealing. We have come to the edge of all that we _know_ and can _demonstrate_; and then, impelled by the moral and rational light within us, we judge and balance all that we know, and all that we are, and we reach, not a demonstration, for that cannot be, but a conviction, a moral and intellectual certainty, of the being of a primordial cause, which is second, in its firmness and security, to nothing within the area of mind.