STALLO'S "CONCEPTS OF MODERN PHYSICS:' 99 



and because matter thus divested of its special properties forms a kind 

 of rock-bed of thought, we conclude that similarly undifferentiated 

 matter must form the rock-bed, or, to vary the figure, the original raw 

 material, of the objective universe. But manifestly, in the scale of 

 reality, the highest place must be given to things as they are, to indi- 

 vidual objects with their full complement of properties, and succes- 

 sively lower places to such objects robbed by abstraction of one after 

 another of their essential attributes. When we come to matter, we 

 have just enough left to think about and no more. The logical faculty, 

 however, goes further, and performs the tremendous feat of sundering 

 the elements, mass and force, the conjunction of which alone renders 

 matter a possible object of thought ; whence arise endless discussions 

 as to whether motion is a function of matter, or matter a function of 

 motion. The first opinion is known as the mechanical or corpuscular 

 theory of matter, and the latter as the dynamical. The true answer 

 to these intellectual puzzles is that we have no business dealing with 

 the mere elements of thought as if they were elements of things, and 

 that so long as we do we shall only succeed in landing ourselves in 

 in what Mr. Spencer calls " alternative impossibilities of thought." 



The notion of the inertia of matter is similarly a product of ab- 

 straction, and by no means a representation of fact. Our author's 

 explanation (page 163) is as follows : "When a body is considered 

 by itself conceptually detached from the relations which give rise to 

 its attributes it is, indeed, inert, and all its action comes from with- 

 out. But this isolated instance of a body is a pure fiction of the in- 

 tellect. Bodies exist solely in virtue of their relations ; their reality 

 lies in their mutual action. Inert matter, in the sense of the mechan- 

 ical theory, is as unknown to experience as it is inconceivable in 

 thought. Every particle of matter of which we have any knowledge 

 attracts every other particle in conformity with the laws of gravita- 

 tion ; and every material element exerts chemical, electrical, and other 

 force upon other elements which, in respect of such force, are its 

 correlates. A body can not, indeed, move itself ; but this is true for 

 the same reason that it can not exist in and by itself. The very pres- 

 ence of a body in space and time, as well as its motion, implies inter- 

 action with other bodies, and therefore, actio in distans ; consequent- 

 ly, all attempts to reduce gravitation or chemical action to mere 

 impact are -aimless and absurd. 



This whole passage is so completely on the lines of the Positive 

 Philosophy, that to us it seems singular that the author could have 

 penned- it without making some reference to the precisely similar 

 views of Auguste Comte, views which the scientific world in general 

 has largely disregarded or ignored. "Did the material molecules," 

 says Comte ("Philosophic Positive," vol. i, p. 550), "present to our 

 observation no other property than weight, that would suffice to pre- 

 vent any physicist ^from regarding them as essentially passive. It 



