XLII. Some Remarks on the Theortj of Matter. By Robert L. Ellis, M. A., 

 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 



[Read May 22, 1848.] 



In the present state of Science, there are few subjects of greater interest than the enquiry 

 whether all the phenomena of the universe are to be explained by the agency of mechanical force, 

 and if not whether the new principles of causation, such as chemical affinity and vital action, are to 

 be conceived of as wholly independent of mechanical force, or in some way not hitherto explained 

 cognate and connected with it. One reason among many which makes this enquiry interesting is 

 the circumstance that the application of mathematics to natural philosophy has, up to the present 

 time, either been confined to phenomena, which were supposed to be explicable without assuming 

 any other principle of causation than ordinary "push and pull" forces, or as in Fourier's theory of 

 heat and Ohm's theory of the galvanic circuit, have been based on proximate empirical principles. 



2. The intention of the remarks which I have the honour to offer to the Society is to suggest 

 reasons for believing that while on the one hand it is impossible not merely from the short-comings 

 of our analysis but from the nature of the case to reduce, as it appears that Laplace wished to do, 

 all the phenomena of the universe to one great dynamical problem, we cannot recognise the 

 existence of any principle of causation wholly disconnected with ordinary mechanical force, or of 

 which the nature could be explained without a reference to local motion : in other words, that 

 the idea of "qualitative action" in the sense which the phrase naturally suggests must be rejected. 

 It will be seen from the explanations I am about to attempt that the objection which Leibnitz has 

 opposed to the atomic, and in effect to any meclianical philosophy, namely, that on such principles 

 a finite intelligence might be conceived to exist by which all the phenomena of the universe would 

 be fully comprehended, does not (whatever may be thought of its validity) appear to apply to the 

 views which I have been led to entertain. For these views essentially depend on the conception of 

 what may be called a hierarchy of causes, to which we have no reason for assigning any finite limit. 

 Of this series of principles of causation, ordinary mechanical force is the first term. 



3. With respect to the first point, namely, the impossibility of explaining all phenomena mecha- 

 nically, it may be remarked, that we are met, in the attempt to discuss it, by the difficulty which 

 always attends the establishment of a negative proposition. It is clear that as in the present state 

 of our knowledge we are far from being able to enumerate and classify the phenomena which 

 are or which might be produced by the combined agency of conceivable mechanical forces, we 

 are not in a position to decide a priori that any given phenomenon might not be thus produced. 

 Non constat, but that the impossibility we find in the attempt to explain the causes of its existence 

 may have no higher origin than the imperfect command which we have as yet obtained of the 

 principles of mechanical causation. We meet, it may be said, with a multitude of ordinary 

 dynamical problems which have as yet received no adequate solution — why then should we have 

 recourse to ul'w kinds of causes, while we have not as yet exhausted the resources, if the expression 

 may thus be used, of those which we already recognise.' To this enquiry no conclusive answer 

 can be given, but the following considerations will I think naturally suggest themselves. 



