TEE NEW THEORY OF MATTER. 501 



kind. But if the dust beneath our feet be indeed compounded of in- 

 numerable systems, whose elements are ever in the most rapid motion, 

 yet retain through uncounted ages their equilibrium unshaken, we can 

 hardly deny that the marvels we directly see are not more worthy of 

 admiration than those which recent discoveries have enabled us dimly 

 to surmise. 



Now whether the main outlines of the world-picture which I have 

 just imperfectly presented to you be destined to survive, or whether 

 in their turn they are to be obliterated by some new drawing on the 

 scientific palimpsest, all will, I think, admit that so bold an attempt 

 to unify physical nature excites feelings of the most acute intellectual 

 gratification. The satisfaction it gives is almost esthetic in its inten- 

 sity and quality. We feel the same sort of pleasurable shock as when 

 from the crest of some melancholy pass we first see far below us the 

 sudden glories of plain, river and mountain. Whether this vehement 

 sentiment in favor of a simple universe has any theoretical justifica- 

 tion, I will not venture to pronounce. There is no a priori reason that 

 I know of for expecting that the material world should be a modifica- 

 tion of a single medium, rather than a composite structure built out of 

 sixty or seventy elementary substances, eternal and eternally different. 

 Why, then, should we feel content with, the first hypothesis and not 

 with the second? Yet so it is. Men of science have always been 

 restive under the multiplication of entities. They have eagerly noted 

 any sign that the chemical atom was composite, and that the different 

 chemical elements had a common origin. Nor for my part do I think 

 such instincts should be ignored. John Mill, if I rightly remember, 

 was contemptuous of those who saw any difficulty in accepting the doc- 

 trine of ' action at a distance.' So far as observation and experiment 

 can tell us, bodies do actually influence each other at a distance; and 

 why* should they not ? Why seek to go behind experience in obedience 

 to some a priori sentiment for which no argument can be adduced? 

 So reasoned Mill, and to his reasoning I have no reply. Nevertheless, 

 we can not forget that it is to Faraday's obstinate disbelief in ' action 

 at a distance,' that we owe some of the crucial discoveries on which 

 both our electric industries and the electric theory of matter are ulti- 

 mately founded. While at this very moment physicists, however baf- 

 fled in the quest for an explanation of gravity, refuse altogether to 

 content themselves with the belief, so satisfying to Mill, that it is a 

 simple and inexplicable property of masses acting on each other across 

 space. 



These obscure intimations about the nature of reality deserve, I 

 think, more attention than has yet been given to them. That they 

 exist is certain; that they modify the indifferent impartiality of pure 

 empiricism can hardly be denied. The common notion that he who 



