MATTER 251 



ception itself. When we go a stage further in the 

 phenomenalising of conceptions, and postulate the reality 

 of atoms, the antinomy becomes clear. If bodies are 

 made up of swarms of atoms, how can they have a real 

 volume or form ? What is the volume or form of a swarm 

 of bees or a cloud of dust ? Obviously we can only give 

 them shape and size by enclosing them conceptually in 

 an ideal geometrical surface. Just as in a swarm of bees 

 or a cloud of dust odd members of the community near 

 this imaginary surface are continually passing in and out, 

 so — if we phenomenalise conception — we must assert that 

 at the surface of water or of iron odd molecules or atoms 

 are perpetually leaving or, it may be, re-entering the 

 swarm. Condensation and evaporation go on at the 

 surface of the water and the iron gives a metallic smell. 

 Now if the swarm be in this continual state of flow at the 

 surface we can only speak of it as having volume or form 

 ideally, or as a mode of conceptually distinguishing one 

 group of sense-impressions from another (p. 165). It is 

 the conceptual volume or form which occupies space, and 

 it is this form, and not the sense-impressions, which we 

 conceive to move. If we throw back the occupancy of 

 space on the individual members of the swarm, it is 

 certainly not the volumes or forms of the individuals, 

 which we consider as the volume or form of the material 

 body, for the former we treat as imperceptible and the 

 latter as perceptible. Further, we must then infer that 

 the unknown is ultimately unlike the known, that geo- 

 metrical ideals can be realised in the imperceptible. This, 

 " however, is a distinct breach of the second canon of logical 

 inference (p. 60). 



So far, then, our analysis of the physicist's definitions 

 of matter irresistibly forces upon us the following conclu- 

 sions : That matter as the unknowable cause of sense- 

 impression is a metaphysical entity ^ as meaningless for 

 science as any other postulating of causation in the beyond 



1 The scientific reader must for the present have at least sufficient con- 

 fidence in the author not to believe that mass is thrown overboard with the 

 fetish matter. 



