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



from that at which we arrived in the foregoing section. If, 

 as was there contended, our consciousness of Space is a pro- 

 duct of accumulated experiences, partly our own but chiefly 

 ancestral — if, as was pointed out, the experiences from 

 which our consciousness of Space is abstracted, can be re- 

 ceived only through impressions of resistance made upon 

 the organism; the necessary inference is, that experiences 

 of resistance being those from which the conception of 

 Space is generated, the resistance-attribute of Matter must 

 be regarded as primordial and the space-attribute as de- 

 rivative. Whence it becomes manifest that our ex- 

 perience of force, is that out of which the idea of Matter is 

 built. Matter as opposing our muscular energies, being im- 

 mediately present to consciousness in terms of force ; and its 

 occupancy of Space being known by an abstract of experi- 

 ences originally given in terms of force; it follows that 

 forces, standing in certain correlations, form the whole con- 

 tent of our idea of Matter. 



Such being our cognition of the relative reality, what are 

 we to say of the absolute reality I AVe can only say that it 

 is some mode of the Unknowable, related to the Matter we 

 know, as cause to effect. The relativity of our cognition of 

 Matter is shown alike by the above analysis, and by the con- 

 tradictions which are evolved when we deal with the cogni- 

 tion as an absolute one (§ 16). But, as we have lately seen, 

 though known to us only under relation, Matter is as real in 

 the true sense of that word, as it would be could we know it 

 out of relation; and further, the relative reality which we 

 know as Matter, is necessarily represented to the mind as 

 standing in a persistent or real relation to the absolute real- 

 ity. We may therefore deliver ourselves over with- 

 out hesitation, to those terms of thought which experience 

 has organized in us. TTe need not in our physical, chemical, 

 or other researches, refrain from dealing with Matter as 

 made up of extended and resistent atoms; for this concep- 

 tion, necessarily resulting from our experiences of Matter, 



