SCIENCE AS A SYMBOL AND A LAW 23 



to penetrate it, and occupied space is merely a group 

 of various energies. In his enthusiasm he does not 

 hesitate at difficulties. " When a stick strikes you," 

 he exclaims, " which do you feel, the stick or the 

 energy?" One might as well ask the old question, 

 Which comes first, the owl or the egg? a matter of 

 infinite dispute and no decision. Although Professor 

 Ostwald's work bristles with mathematical equations 

 and scientific terms, he asks us to return to the meta- 

 physical methods of the medieval schoolmen to thrash 

 over again the endless verbal disputes of nominalists 

 and realists. 



While mechanics is the only branch of physics which 

 has become a complete science through the use of the 

 inductive, or abstractive, method, just as soon as we 

 invent atoms and ethers, or consider an abstract quan- 

 tity, like energy, to be an entity, in order to explain 

 the modus operandi of matter and motion, and to serve 

 as connecting links in explaining non-mechanical 

 phenomena, such as electricity and light, mechanics 

 drifts at once into a highly metaphysical and subjective 

 study where each man's opinion is guided only by an 

 inward sentiment of knowledge. To what lengths 

 this can go, I shall show in a later chapter when I 

 present the confusion of thought of certain eminent 

 men of science who change impersonal mechanical 

 energy into a kind of vital and beneficent principle 

 ruling over the thoughts and actions of human society, 



