THE LAWS OF MOTION 297 



Chap. IX. ^ 11)5 we assume that because our conceptual 

 model describes very accurately our immediate perceptual 

 experience, it would also describe the antecedents and 

 consequents of that experience, did they exist perceptually ; 

 it is logical to infer when we see the panorama of a river, 

 one portion of which accurately depicts all we know of 

 the river Thames, that the rest of the panorama depicts 

 parts of the same river, with which we are unacquainted. 

 In the necessarily limited verifiable correspondence of our 

 perceptual experience with our conceptual model lies the 

 basis of our mechanical description of the universe. As a 

 shorthand resume of our perceptual experience, and as a 

 co-ordination of that experience with stored sense-impresses, 

 the only objective element of this mechanical theory is 

 seen to lie in the similar perceptive and reasoning faculties 

 of two human minds. Thus the sole support of that 

 materialism which, " proceeding from the fixed relation 

 between matter and force as an indestructible basis," finds 

 " mechanical laws inherent in the things themselves," 

 collapses under the slightest pressure of logical criticism.^ 

 But while we sweep away materialism and allow that 

 mechanism is no explanation, only a conceptual description 

 of the changes we perceive in phenomena, we must not 

 rush into the opposite extreme and underrate the surprising 

 value of our mechanical model of the universe. Many as 

 are its defects and failures we yet see its accuracy surely, 

 if gradually, extending ; its assertions as to what has 

 happened in the past and its predictions as to what will 

 happen in the future continually receive the most striking 

 and ample verification. At times when mechanical 

 analysis through some recondite mathematical process has 

 enabled us to resume in a few brief statements numerous 

 facts of perceptual experience, our reason seems lord of the 

 universe, and we foretaste what a developed human 



1 The chief German representatives of this materialism are J. Moleschott 

 and L. Biicliner, and it has found its warmest supporters in England among 

 the followers of the late Mr. Bradlaugh. It is perhaps needless to add that 

 the gifted lady, who speaks of secularists as holding the " creed of Clifford and 

 Charles Bradlaugh," has failed to see the irreconcilable divergence between 

 the inventor of " mind-stuff" and the follower of Biichner. 



