THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER. 181 



obtains currency. In the second place, the currency of this 

 belief continues so long as there is not such power of intro- 

 spection that it can be seen what happens when the attempt 

 is made to annihilate Matter in thought. But when, during 

 mental evolution, the vague ideas arising in a nervous 

 structure imperfectly organized, are replaced by the clear 

 ideas arising in a definite nervous structure; this definite 

 structure, moulded by experience into correspondence with 

 external phenomena, makes necessary in thought the rela- 

 tions answering to absolute uniformities in things. Hence, 

 among others, the conception of the Indestructibility of 

 Matter. 



For careful self-analysis shows this to be a datum of 

 consciousness. Conceive the space before you to be cleared 

 of all bodies save one. Now imagine the remaining one not 

 to be removed from its place, but to lapse into nothing 

 while standing in that place. You fail. The space which 

 was solid you cannot conceive becoming empty, save by 

 transfer of that which made it solid. What 



is termed the ultimate incomprehensibility of Matter, is an 

 admitted law of thought. However small the bulk to 

 which we conceive a piece of matter reduced, it is impos- 

 sible to conceive it reduced into nothing. While we can 

 represent to ourselves the parts of the matter as approxi- 

 mated, we cannot represent to ourselves the quantity of 

 matter as made less. To do this would be to imagine some 

 of the constituent parts compressed into nothing; which 

 is no more possible than to imagine compression of the 

 whole into nothing. Our inability to conceive 



Matter becoming non-existent, is immediately consequent 

 on the nature of thought. Thought consists in the estab- 

 lishment of relations. There can be no relation established, 

 and therefore no thought framed, when one of the related 

 terms is absent from consciousness. Hence it is impossible 

 to think of something becoming nothing, for the same 

 reason that it is impossible to think of nothing becoming 



