io THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



depend on some similar atomistic hypothesis. Complex 

 material bodies must be divided up into elementary 

 masses so small that any conceivable variation in them, 

 except mere inertia, must be forever beyond our meas- 

 urement or even conception. Because, if the atom 

 were divisible or variable, which its very name denies, 

 then the actions of its component parts and their varia- 

 tions might be productive of such an attribute as 

 temperature or color, and thus introduce into the atom 

 properties other than those purely mechanical. 



From experience we know of only one way a tangible 

 body may make another move, and that is by a direct 

 push. Either atoms must be granted a mysterious 

 power of attraction through empty space, or else the 

 part of the universe unoccupied by ponderable matter 

 must be filled with a medium or ether, to act as the 

 mechanical link between atom and atom. Now this 

 ether is either continuous or discontinuous. If con- 

 tinuous, it would serve as a link ; but how is matter to 

 move through it or even to exist in it unless two bodies 

 may occupy the same space at the same time, or unless 

 ponderable matter is but an attribute of this ethereal 

 matter, of some such nature as a whirlpool on the 

 surface of water? Such a variation maintains its 

 identity of form as it moves, but not of the matter 

 composing it ; this is to replace concrete matter by the 

 abstract idea of form or motion, which, in the end, is 

 always repugnant to our sense of reality, and arouses 



