Joseph’s new concept that the earth had been “organized” out of already existing matter rather than created out of nothing had a less obvious but no less definite root in his new scholarship. He had recently been reading Thomas Dick’sPhilosophy of a Future State, a long-winded dissertation on astronomy and metaphysics.! Dick’s elucidation of the thesis that matter is eternal and indestructible Joseph had found convincing, and he had logically concluded that God must have made the heavens and the earth out of materials He had on hand.
