Man being Matter, and thought and fancy being material forces, we shall find in the history of Matter the origin of much that seems obscure. Man consists of the following properties of Matter; oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, kalium, natrium, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, silicon, chlorine, fluorine, lithium, manganese, copper, lead. I invite the reader to consider this with all the material forces of his being. These forms of Matter with their energies, of which the body, mind, and soul of man consist, have always been; they burn in the farthest stars, they are knit up in the texture--thinner than gossamer, than vapour, as imponderable as fancy--of the primitive substance, the Ether, which fills the interstellar spaces from moon to sun, from orbit to orbit, from galaxy to galaxy, the exquisite material out of which the nebulae are constringed in beads and drops and clots of Matter upon threads of lightning, meteors, meteorites, that collide into flame, or by what process soever, to become upon condensation, concentration, contraction, systems and constellations, suns and planets. The whole Matter of man, however mutable, is therefore everlasting, has no beginning and will have no end; for Matter is indestructible. The earths, metals, vapours, mysterious properties of the one mystery Matter, which make up man, are in themselves supposed to be unconscious: sensitive in every electron, but in all likelihood without sensibility and therefore unconscious. Sensitive all forms of Matter are; the elements have individuality, character, genius; have passions--fierce passions, some of them; have memory, more or less positive, far-reaching, and reliable. Oxygen seems to be the chief male element, the sultan of Matter, with his seraglio of dazzling metals, earths, vapours, not one of which he ever fails to remember; it is he who knits up the rocks and ridges of the globe, the bones of men and beasts; he supports all fires of suns and hearts; he is the food of flame and the fibre of the shower which extinguishes flame; and, by a miracle of male parthenogenesis, with lightning for accoucheur in place of Vulcan and his hammer, it is he who brings forth the crystalline virgin ozone to clear the air of the world. Hydrogen, the ethereal and versatile vapour, whose passionate flame is the light and heat of the most brilliant and the hottest stars, whose delicate and fluent being is also the feminine principle in water--the exquisite hermaphrodite that flows so wooingly about the world--forgets not her way in the sea, nor ever foregoes her purpose in plants and animals. Carbon, the workman among the elements, the artist, the artificer, the labouring class, and the proletariate of Matter, is the form one likes the best; he is coal and the diamond, wine and blood, the seed of plants and animals, love and poetry, lust and slaughter, wood and flesh, and bones and rocks; the texture of all life; the human element, the diabolic element, the