THE FORCE BEHIND NATURE, 357 



matter into simpler and simpler components, we must come at 

 last to the simplest, to the ultimate material, to the substratum ; 

 and this we find in the impression of resistance we receive through 

 what we may call our &quot;force-sense.&quot; * 



Such being the teachings alike of general and of scientific 

 experience, I cannot but feel surprised that any persons claiming 

 the title of philosophers should affirm that we know nothing except 

 matter and motion, and that force is a creation of our own 

 imagination. One might suppose such persons to be either 

 destitute of the &quot;force-sense,&quot; or to have based their philo 

 sophical system upon the movements of the heavenly bodies 

 which they can only see, instead of upon those mundane phe 

 nomena in the cognition of which they can bring their hands 

 to the assistance of their eyes. How essential this assistance 

 is to the formation of correct conceptions of the solid forms and 

 relative positions of the objects around us, is known to every one 

 who has studied the physiology of the senses. Should we not 

 think it absurd on the part of any one who possesses in the use of 

 his hands the means of detecting the error of his visual percep 

 tions, if he were to base a superstructure of reasoning still more 

 to found a whole system of philosophy upon the latter alone ? 

 Yet such appears to me to be the position of those who deny our 

 direct cognition of force. 



Let us suppose (if possible) a man who had enjoyed the full 

 use of his eyes, but whose limbs had been completely paralyzed 

 from infancy, looking on at a game of billiards. He would see a 

 succession of motions connected by regular sequence the motion 

 of the arm of the player, the stroke of the cue, the roll of the ball, 

 its contact with another ball, the movement of the second ball, the 

 change of direction or the entire stop of the first, the rebound of 

 balls from the cushion in altered directions, and so on. And he 

 might frame a statement in &quot;terms of motion &quot; of all that passes 

 before his eyes, thinking this all he can know. But suppose the 

 limbs of such a man to be suddenly endowed with the ordinary 



* Herbert Spencer considers the cognition of resistance to he essentially 

 dermal from the sense of muscular tension. I have already expressed my 

 reason for now dissenting from this view, which I myself formerly held. 



