HYPOTHESIS 141 



theory. Recent researches into electrical phenomena, and into the properties of 

 radium, have, however, led scientists to suppose that there may be at work, in 

 nature, agencies other and more powerful than chemical forces, capable of dis 

 integrating, and indeed actually and constantly disintegrating, the chemical atoms 

 and molecules of all matter. 



Quite different from this chemical atomic theory, though at first engrafted 

 on the latter, and advocated as an extension of the latter, is what we have 

 called the Atomic or Mechanical Conception of the Universe. While the 

 former hypothesis gives a view of matter which is most probably if not certainly 

 true as far as it goes, the latter is not only beyond the range of rigorous veri 

 fication, but may easily be shown to conflict with multitudes of facts, and to be 

 accordingly untenable. It would reduce all bodies, simple and compound, to 

 aggregations of homogeneous corpuscles infinites! mally smaller than the hydro 

 gen atom : it would endow those ultimate atoms with local motion in space, 

 and suppose them subject to the laws of mechanical motion alone : it would 

 then try to explain and account for all the phenomena of nature, all the forces 

 of nature, all the properties of bodies, animate and inanimate, even all the 

 phenomena of human life and mind, by the evolutions of those motions in 

 obedience to the principles of mechanics ! There is something peculiarly at 

 tractive or seductive about a conception that is so vast, so simple, so clearly 

 imaginable ; but, unfortunately for the mechanical conception, those attributes 

 are no test of truth. 1 There is, indeed, in the human mind an innate craving 

 to simplify the complex, to reduce the manifold to unity ; but we must not 

 allow this craving to blind us to facts, or induce us to ignore the unexplained. 

 &quot; There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in &quot; the 

 mechanical &quot; philosophy &quot; ! To weigh and measure phenomena exactly, is 

 not to know all about them. Nor, in our endeavour to explain some one aspect 

 of them, must we forget that there are others still unexplained. 



230. VERIFICATION BY CUMULATIVE EVIDENCE. It is clear, 

 then, that we must not expect the same sort of rigorous verifica 

 tion in every department of scientific and philosophic investigation. 

 In the special sciences, which seek the proximate causes of nar 

 rower fields of phenomena, we may hope to approach, if not to 

 realize, the ideal of establishing reciprocating causal relations 

 (221), by eliminating what is irrelevant through the application 

 of the &quot; experimental methods &quot; to be explained in the next 

 chapter. But we must often be content to leave this elimination 

 incomplete, and so to bring to light only a non-reciprocating 

 cause. 2 Furthermore, there are multitudes of hypotheses in 

 science, in regard to which we can scarcely ever hope to be able 

 to assert that they are the only possible hypotheses that will 



1 C/. WELTON, op. cit., ii., p. 209. 



a C/. WELTON and MONAHAN, Intermediate Logic, chap, xxx., for distinction 

 bet%veen the Direct Development of Hypothesis by the &quot; experimental methods,&quot; and 

 the Indirect Establishment of Hypotheses by inferences pointing to their superiority 

 as compared with other conceivable alternatives. 



