All that they can undertake to say is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, among these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power.

He can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he may reason thence that human power did not create it.

But to assert that matter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a child should try to beat the cylinder of a steam engine to pieces, and, failing in the attempt, should say, "I am sure this cylinder existed from eternity, because I am unable to destroy it." But not only is the assertion of the eternity of matter unproven, and impossible to be proved, it is capable of the most demonstrable refutation, by one of the recent discoveries of science.

The principle of the argument is so plain that a child of four years old can understand it.

It is simply this, that all substances in heaven and earth are compounded of several elements; but no compound can be eternal.
We say to our would-be philosophers, When you tell us that matter is eternal, how does that account for the formation of this world?
What is this matter you speak of?
This world consists not of a philosophical abstraction called matter, nor yet of one substance known by that name, but of a great variety of material substances, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, iron, aluminum, and some fifty others already discovered.[2] Now, which of these is the eterna-matter you speak of?
Is it iron, or sulphur, or clay, or oxygen?
If it is any one of them, where did the others come from?
Did a mass of iron, becoming discontented with its gravity, suddenly metamorphose itself into a cloud of gas, or into a pail of water?
Or are they all eternal?
Have we fifty-seven eternal beings?
Are they all eternal in their present combinations?
or is it only the single elements that are eternal?
You see that your hypothesis--that matter is eternal--gives me no light on the formation of this world, which is not a shapeless mass of a philosophical abstraction called matter, but a regular and beautiful building, composed of a great variety of matters.