SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE. 169 



ingly accepted in thought as a valid basis for our reason- 

 ings ; which, when rightly carried on, will bring us to truths 

 that have a like relative reality — the only truths which con- 

 cern us or can j^ossibly be known to us. 



Concerning Time, relative and absolute, a parallel argu- 

 ment leads to parallel conclusions. These are too obvious to 

 need specifying in detail. 



§ 48. Our conception of Matter, reduced to its simplest 

 shape, is that of co-existent positions that offer resistance ; as 

 contrasted with our conception of Space, in which the co- 

 existent positions offer no resistance. We think of Body as 

 bounded by surfaces that resist; and as made up through- 

 out of parts that resist. Mentally abstract the co-existent 

 resistances, and the consciousness of Body disappears; leav- 

 ing behind it the consciousness of Space. And since the 

 group of co-existing resistent positions constituting a por- 

 tion of matter, is uniformly capable of giving us impressions 

 of resistance in combination with various muscular adjust- 

 ments, according as we touch its near, its remote, its right, 

 or its left side; it results that as different muscular adjust- 

 ments habitually indicate different co-existences, we are 

 obliged to conceive every portion of matter as containing 

 more than one resistent position — that is, as occupying 

 Space. Hence the necessity we are under of representing 

 to ourselves the ultimate elements of Matter as being at 

 once extended and resistent: this being tlie universal form 

 of our sensible experiences of Matter, becomes the form 

 which our conception of it cannot transcend, however 

 minute the fragments which imaginary subdivisions pro- 

 duce. Of these two inseparable elements, the resist- 

 ance is primary, and the extension secondary. Occupied ex- 

 tension, or Body, being distinguished in consciousness from 

 unoccupied extension, or Space, by its resistance, this attri- 

 bute must clearly have precedence in the genesis of the 

 idea. Such a conclusion is, indeed, an obvious corollary 



