Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



one wears boots of one kind or another. So far 

 there is no great harm done. But now having 

 by the method of ignorance thought away all the 

 qualities of bodies, except the two correlatives of 

 mass and motion, we set about to explain the pheno- 

 mena of Nature generally by these two " thinks " 

 that are left. We credit these " thinks " (mass 

 and motion) with an independent existence and 

 proceed to derive the rest of phenomena from 

 them. The proceeding of course is absurd, and 

 ends by exposing its own absurdity. Thinking 

 of mass and motion as existing in the various bodies 

 apart from colour, smell, and so forth — which of 

 course is not the case — we combine the two attributes 

 into one concept, the atom, which we thus assume 

 to exist in all bodies. The atom has neither colour, 

 smell, warmth, taste, life or intelligence ; it has 

 only mass and motion ; for it came by the method 

 of divesting our thought of everything hut mass 

 and motion. It is a projection of a " think " 

 upon the background of nature. And it is an 

 absurdity. No such thing exists in all the wide 

 universe as mass and motion divested from colour, 

 smell, warmth, life and intelligence. The atom 

 is unthinkable. It is perfectly hard and it is per- 

 fectly elastic — which is the same as saying that it 

 bends and it doesn't bend at the same time ; it 

 has form, and it hasn't form ; it has affinities and 

 yet is perfectly indifferent. To justify to men 

 the wa)'S of their Mumbo Jumbo has sorely exer- 

 cised the votaries of the Atom. One philosopher 

 says that it is mere matter, passive, exercising no 



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