WHAT IS MATTER? 29 



■ours are there with matter, hut matter they simply are not, either 

 singly or all together. Color is with its beauty, in the eye, or rather 

 the mind, of the beholder, and there too is sound with its melody, 

 and all other experiences. They are the effects wrought upon us, 

 through the intermediation of our sense organs, by matter. Given an 

 adequate outer cause, an eye in its organism to be affected, and a mind 

 to perceive, and color is the result. Given cause, ear and mind, and 

 we have sound; or cause, touch organ and mind, and we have the 

 feeling of hardness. But matter, without sense organs or mind, can 

 not have such experiences. And the substance of matter they are not. 

 We know so much about the total situation when matter is present 

 that we easily delude ourselves into thinking that we know the matter 

 too. But, as Dr. Higgins once said, in dealing with experiences we are 

 merely playing with the pebbles on the beach ; the sea of reality, matter 

 itself, is still beyond our ken. What matter is not, its effects on our 

 senses, is plain. But what it is, all such talk leaves as dark as before 

 it was uttered. 



And, until recently, science has been as dumb and helpless when 

 confronted by this question, as has common sense. Much is told about 

 the behavior of matter; how fast and far, and when it moves, and 

 what is the result of its impact, etc. ; all very interesting and highly 

 useful information. But how anything behaves, what it does, is one 

 thing; what it is is something entirely different. One is reminded of 

 Dr. Johnson's definition of oats, as a grain eaten by men in Scotland 

 and horses in England, except that he does class it as a grain. 



Another familiar device of science is to divide and conquer ; though 

 in fact dividing does not itself succeed, but merely leads indirectly 

 towards success. " No wonder," says science, " we have not found 

 out what matter is, for matter is very deceptive, and is not at all 

 what it seems. In fact and in truth matter is made up, not of the 

 large bulks we see, but of minute particles, called molecules, in the 

 neighborhood, for the simplest element, hydrogen, of one fifty-millionth 

 of an inch in diameter,' and these minute molecules are in turn made 

 up of very much smaller particles, atoms, two to a molecule in some 

 elements, many more than two in others. And observe, we can point 

 out how the atoms are placed in the different molecules, and see how 

 beautifully they shift their places in mystic dance when a chemical 

 reaction occurs. All that happens in the intercourse of matter is at 

 bottom but the interplay of atoms and of molecules. How wonderful 

 is nature, and how searching the discoveries of science ! " 



All of which is true, indeed profoundly useful truth. For has not 

 science transformed the face of the earth in an incredibly short time, 

 a little over fifty years. And yet how much nearer are we to knowing 

 what matter is when we discover how it is put together? If we ask 

 what wood is, and are told that it is made up of tiny pieces of wood 



