98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mention of the relation of his philosophical views to those of other 

 writers. He does not give us his bearings, so to speak, but leaves us 

 to discover them for ourselves. We can not think this policy a good 

 one. To the general reader it is not helpful, as it may lead him to 

 form an exaggerated idea of the originality of the views contained in 

 the volume a result, we are sure, at which the author would not con- 

 sciously aim. Some special illustrations of what we are now remark- 

 ing upon may present themselves before we close. 



" All metaphysical or ontological speculation is based upon a dis- 

 regard of some or all of the truths above set forth. Metaphysical 

 thinking is an attempt to deduce the true nature of things from our 

 concepts of them." The last sentence presents us with a definition of 

 admirable terseness and force, stating as it does the whole case against 

 metaphysics in a dozen words. For purposes of thought we analyze 

 and abstract ; but, not content with deriving from these operations the 

 logical aid they are calculated to afford, we fly off to the conclusion that 

 what we have done in the realm of thought holds good outside of thought 

 or absolutely. To apply this to the matter in hand : where the " me- 

 chanical theory of the universe " asserts mass and motion to be the " ab- 

 solutely real and indestructible elements of all physical existence," it 

 overlooks the fact that mass and motion by themselves are really 

 elements of nothing but thought, and are simply a kind of mental 

 residuum after all the more special properties of objects have, by suc- 

 cessively wider generalizations (as before explained), been mentally 

 abstracted. As our author puts it : " They are ultimate products of 

 generalization, the intellectual vanishing-points of the lines of abstrac- 

 tion which proceed from the infimce species of sensible experience. 

 Matter is the summum genus of the classification of bodies on the 

 basis of their physical and chemical properties. Of this concept, matter, 

 mass and motion are the inseparable constituents. The mechanical the- 

 ory, therefore, takes not only the ideal concept matter, but its two 

 inseparable constituent attributes, and assumes each of them to be a 

 distinct and real entity." Mr. Stallo sees in this a survival of mediae- 

 val realism ; but it is really nothing else than the opinion of the mul- 

 titude, now and in all ages, elevated to the rank of a philosophical 

 doctrine. Men in general are materialists who temper their material- 

 ism to themselves by a supplementary belief in spiritual existences. 



Not only is the mind prone to believe that its concepts are truly 

 representative of external realities, but it readily assumes also that the 

 order of succession in the world of thought must be the order of de- 

 velopment in the external world. The effect of the latter illusion is 

 completely to invert the order of reality. " The summa genera of 

 abstraction the highest concepts are deemed the most, and the data 

 of sensible experience the least, real of all forms of existence." Be- 

 cause we arrive at the concept matter by leaving out of consideration 

 all the properties that differentiate one form of matter from another, 



