And now, in conclusion, may we not say that this dictum of faith that the universe exists only in virtue of the continued Will of its Creator, is coming more and more to be recognized as a scientific fact. The will of God is the one primal force which streams forth in ever-recurring impulses with an immeasurable rapidity at every point in space--an incessant pulse-beat of the Infinite Life.[352] The disposition and collocations of matter are simply the conditions necessary to the manifestation of this primal force. The chemical atom, "already quite a complex little world,"[353] is a mechanism for the interception, transformation, and transmission of force. All the varied forms of energy are but secondary and derivative streams of force--forms of energy which are conceivable only as effects, and which by mere accommodation we may be permitted to call "causes," yet with this specific reservation that "they are not vicegerents outside of the Divine Will, but are held within the Divine Will." "The word '_cause_' may be used in a secondary and concrete sense as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another; and if, for the sake of convenience, the language of secondary causation be permissible, it should only be with reference to the special phenomena referred to, as it can never be generalized." "The common error, if I am right in supposing it to be such, consists in the abstraction of cause, and in supposing in each case a general secondary cause--a something which is not the First Cause, but which, if we examine it carefully, _must have all the attributes of a first cause, and an existence independent of and dominant over matter_." "CAUSATION IS THE WILL OF GOD."[354] The Divine conservation of the world is the _simple, universal, uniform efficiency of God_. CHAPTER VIII. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN HISTORY. "He hath made of one blood all the nations of mankind to dwell upon the face of the whole earth, and ordained to each the appointed seasons of their existence and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek God."--ST. PAUL. "Divine providence, which conducts all things marvelously, rules the series of human generations from Adam to the end of the world _like one man_, who, from his infancy to his old age, furnishes forth his career in time in passing through all its ages."--ST. AUGUSTINE. "The right education of the human race, so far as concerns the people of God, like that of a single man, advances through certain divisions of time, as that of the individual through the consecutive ages of human life."--ST. AUGUSTINE. "Les nations sont régies par les mêmes lois que les individus."--LAURENT.