RELATIOXS BETWEEN MIXD AND MATTER. 91 



all. So there would be needed as many kinds of elementary 

 stuff out of which the atoms were made as there were kinds of 

 atoms, and this complicated process and material has no degree 

 of probability at all, for the physical evidence we have an abun- 

 dance of to-day all goes to show that nearly, if not quite, all the 

 physical qualities of the elementary atoms is due to the quality 

 of their motions and to nothing else. There is not time to 

 enter upon this phase of the question, but it is true that physi- 

 cists have been led to this conclusion which I quote from Karl 

 Pearson's work on TJie Grautmar of Science: "The whole 

 tendency of modern physics has been to describe natural phe- 

 nomena by reducing them to conceptual motions" ; also, "Hard- 

 ness, weight, color, temperature, cohesion, chemical constitution 

 may all be described by the aid of the motions of a single 

 medium which itself has no hardness, weight, color, tempera- 

 ture, nor indeed elasticity of the ordinary type." If such a 

 view of the subject-matter be true in any sense, then one sees 

 at first glance that what one means by body — that is, visible 

 masses made up of this kind of matter — must be very 

 different from what is involved in the ordinary conception 

 of it, and life must be very different in its nature from 

 what it has so long been held to be. As such matter 

 as is described above cannot be created nor annihilated 

 by any physical or chemical process yet discovered or even 

 imagined, its very existence is a guarantee of all of its so- 

 called qualities, even life itself, and we come in sight of a fact 

 of tremendous importance to every individual who has tasted 

 the sweets of existence and who feels loth to give them up, 

 especially when he sees creation is so large, its possibilities of 

 gratification so boundless, that probably millions of years have 

 been spent in leading up to him, which, if he is to cease con- 

 scious existence at any time, will apparently have been wasted 

 with little or no profit to any. Some have hoped that what is 

 called this life is not all, and they point to this or that as evi- 

 dence for their hope, but there has been a total lack of physical 

 evidence for such an issue. No one who knows anything about 

 matter doubts that an atom of, say carbon, is practically an inde- 

 structible thing ; that its properties were the same a million 



