79 S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



there could be no meaning. Further, if, after the axiom had been 

 brought partially within his comprehension by an example, he were to 

 laugh at the learned words used and propose to say instead, " shoving 

 and back-shoving are one as strong as the other," it would possibly be 

 held by Professor Tait that this way of putting it is hardly satisfactory. 

 If he thought it worth while to enlighten the rustic, he might, perhaps, 

 point out to him that his statement did not include all the facts that 

 not only shoving and back-shoving, but also pulling and back-pulling, are 

 one as strong as the other. Supposing the rustic were not too conceited, 

 he might eventually be taught that the abstract, and to him seemingly 

 vague, formula, "action and reaction are equal .and opposite," was 

 chosen because by no words of a more specific kind could be ex- 

 pressed the truth in its entirety. Professor Tait, however, and Mr. 

 Kirkman, though the physical and mathematical terms they daily 

 employ are so highly abstract as to prove meaningless to those who 

 are unfamiliar with the concrete facts covered by them, seem not to 

 have drawn any general inference from this habitual experience. For, 

 had they done so, they must have been aware that a formula express- 

 ing all orders of changes in their general course astronomic, geologic, 

 biologic, psychologic, sociologic could not possibly be framed in any 

 other than words of the highest abstractness. Perhaps there may 

 come the rejoinder that they do not believe any such universal for- 

 mula is possible. Perhaps they will say that the on-going of things, as 

 shown in our planetary system, has nothing in common with the on- 

 going of things which has brought the earth's crust to its present state, 

 and that this has nothing in common with the on-going of things which 

 the growths and actions of living bodies show us ; although, consider- 

 ing that the laws of molar motion and the laws of molecular action 

 are proved to hold true of them all, it requires considerable courage 

 to assert that the modes of cooperation of the ph} T sical forces in these 

 several regions of phenomena present no traits in common. But, 

 unless they allege that there is one law for the redistribution of mat- 

 ter and motion in the heavens, and another law for the redistribution 

 of matter and motion in the earth's inorganic masses, and another law 

 for its organic masses unless they assert that the transformation 

 everywhere in progress follows here one method and there another 

 they must admit that the proposition which expresses the general 

 course of the transformation can do it only in terms remote in the 

 extremest degree from words suggesting definite objects and actions. 



After noting the unconsciousness thus betrayed by Mr. Kirkman 

 and Professor Tait, that the expression of highly abstract truths neces- 

 sitates highly abstract words, we may go on to note a scarcely less 

 remarkable anomaly of thought shown by them. Mr. Kirkman ap- 

 pears to think, and Professor Tait apparently agrees with him in 

 thinking, that when one of these abstract words, coined from Greek or 

 Latin roots, is transformed into an uncouth-looking combination of 



