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Show Page 186 The world itself must have undergone a series of "organizations and disorganizations" and is manifestly created from "the ruins of some more ancient world." (All of this is, not surprisingly, in accord with the "nebular theory of planetary origins," prevalent among physicists of Orson's day). Having posited the "eternal duration of the elements," Orson then delves into the nature of ageless substance. Immediately, he dismisses the notion of an immaterial God without much comment, almost in passing, as he pauses to clarify the concept of physical mass: "...it is a necessary truth, that God and all other beings or substances which exist, must exist in space, and must occupy a constant amount of space...the occupied and unoccupied portions of space have been constantly the same from all eternity, and they must remain the same...there can be no increase or diminutions of either..." The conservation of matter established, Orson introduces his seventh, and pivotal, argument, that inasmuch as matter is in constant flux, continually changing state, then some force must be effecting the alterations. He ties Force ineluctably to matter, insisting, in a prefiguring of Einstein, that Force "cannot (exist) separate and abstract from substance." And inasmuch as inert matter cannot originate Force, it must also be as eternal as matter itself. "Force," capitalized, he explains as that quality of matter by which it maintains or alters its own condition, and the nature of the cohesive force can be described as "Pressure" rather than attraction (a dig at Newton) because "Attraction would require each part to be entirely passive, having no power whatever over itself, and yet possessing the extraordinary and impossible power of pulling every part towards itself." Matter is, ipso facto, "active" rather than "passive." An illuminating aside here shows Orson trying to be reasonable, -_^4-,,-^oHno ouprv ohieetion. when he concedes that "cohesive force" is |