WIT AT IS TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS? 321 



he contends, verifying the incomprehensible theory, which in return 

 explains the phenomenon " conformably to reason." This is arguing 

 in a circle as vicious as ever a bedlamite whirled in. From the point 

 of view of any system of philosophy under heaven, it is vile meta- 

 physics, and viler physics ! 



Could Kant have been a Zollnerist, instead of a Kantist, we should 

 never have heard of his wrestle with the famous antinomies, which in 

 that event would have disappeared before a new world and a new 

 mind, evoked by the contradictions themselves, from which he would 

 have freed his reason by the cheap and easy method of a new dimen- 

 sion of space, and, if necessary, a new dimension of time, with as 

 many more transcendent discharges from the "causal principle" as 

 the pinch required ; but the philosopher of Konigsberg knew not this 

 master-key of mysteries, and, had it been put before him, we can 

 faintly imagine with what pulverizing force he would have brought 

 down on it his Thor-hammer, unless, forsooth, it vanished before the 

 " whiff and wind " of the ponderous weapon. Germany is responsible 

 for some wild philosophers, but Professor Zollner, it must be confessed, 

 has " bettered the instruction " of the wildest of them. What Kant 

 styled " the error of inactive reason," Zollner runs into " the very error 

 of the moon." Assuredly he leads the canons of scientific inquiry a 

 pretty dance. It is not reckoned sound philosophy to multiply causes 

 unnecessarily, or to assume unknown causes before exhausting known 

 ones ; but what should be thought of a method which, not content 

 with brushing aside the law of parcimony, goes on to account for an 

 effect by assuming a cause beyond the grasp of the intellect to explain 

 what is not understood by what can not be conceived to make known 

 the unknown by the unknowable ; and which, not stopping at this, 

 turns round, and from the mystery of the effect infers not merely the 

 reality of the inconceivable cause, but the evolution of a new faculty 

 to match it? It ever there was pressing need for the application of 

 Occam's razor, it surely is afforded by the theory of this German sci- 

 entist, whose general method in his professional domain, we may be 

 sure, it does not fairly exemplify. If it did, his occupancy of a chair 

 in the University of Leipsic would be almost as great a marvel as the 

 fourth dimension itself. 



"A great step has been made," Professor Zullner congratulates 

 himself, "by acknowledging that the jyossibility of a four-dimensional 

 development of space can be understood by our intellect." This pos- 

 sibility our professor, of course, fancies that he himself understands ; 

 and no doubt he is as capable of understanding it as anybody else is. 

 But does he understand it? Nay, can he think of it? To think of 

 the possibility of a thing is to put together in thought the terms of 

 the proposition asserting the possibility. In the case under notice, 

 can Professor Zollner do this ? He owns that he can not. " No cor- 

 responding image of it can be conceived by the mind," he avows. If 



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