1885.] 071 how Thought presents itself in Nature. 191 



flame excites molecular motions in the walls and furniture, and rouses 

 them so strenuously that they maintain a great complex motion filling 

 the entire space, one ten-millionth part of which entering our eyes is 

 enough to enable us to see them all. And when it so effectually sets 

 up motions near the surfaces of those bodies, these in their turn 

 react on motions beyond, and so none of the motions within those 

 bodies are quite what they were before, nor indeed can any part of 

 the whole universe remain unchanged. There is no one body about 

 us which would be what it is, if any one of all the other bodies of the 

 universe had been other than what it was. The universe then is one, 

 and is not made up of parts that exist separately. 



In each part of which there is material for information 

 about all the rest. 



This is one reflection to which our inquiries naturally give rise. 

 Another, which is closely allied to it, is that in each part of this 

 great universe there is information about all the rest, which only 

 requires an adequate interpreter to be brought conspicuously out. 

 Such an interpreter, organised to deal with one small part of the 

 information really contained in the motions that are dealt with, is 

 our eye, with our optic nerve, our brain and our mind behind it. 

 And what are the motions that it analyses? They are a small 

 selection from those going on in the little circular disk of space 

 which lies beyond the eye immediately in front of its cornea, with a 

 diameter equal to the pupil of the eye and which may be very thin. 

 When we stand in the country and see every blade of grass beneath 

 our feet, birds and insects on the wing, the leaves upon a thousand 

 trees, clouds, mountains, hedges and fields — what is really occurring 

 is that molecular motions in all those objects have been brought to 

 such activity by the undulation which has spread towards them from 

 the sun, that they in turn have been able to send abroad motions 

 in all directions, some of which have reached the tiny patch described 

 above in front of each of our eyes. None of all that motion beyond 

 conveys information to us except by being the cause why those two 

 tiny patches are moving as they are ; and the meaning of a small 

 part of the motion that has been thus excited within those two little 

 disks is in one particular way interpreted for us by the eye, and 

 contains within it all the information given to us through that organ, 

 and indeed contains vastly more. An equal amount of information 

 about what is going on elsewhere is contained within every similar 

 patch of space throughout the whole universe. 



Outcome of the Scientific Inquiry. 



Thus we may extend the statement made before, and say that 

 scientific inquiry finds motion pervading the material universe ; 

 motion everywhere, motions underlying every phenomenon, and it 

 finds nothing existing outside the mind excepting motions. 



