THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER. 183 



terminable by the quantity of gravitative force it mani- 

 fests. And this is the kind of evidence on which 

 Science bases its alleged induction that Matter is inde- 

 structible. Whenever a piece of substance lately visible 

 and tangible, has been reduced to an invisible, intangible 

 state, but is proved by the weight of the gas into which 

 it has been transformed to be still existing; the assump- 

 tion is that, though otherwise insensible to us, the amount 

 of matter is the same if it still tends towards the Earth 

 with the same force. Similarly, every case in which the 

 weight of an element present in combination is inferred 

 from the known weight of another element which it 

 neutralizes, is a case in which the quantity of matter is ex- 

 pressed in terms of the quantity of chemical force it exerts ; 

 and in which this specific chemical force is assumed to be 

 the correlative of a specific gravitative force. 



Thus, then, by the Indestructibility of Matter, we really 

 mean the indestructibility of the force with which Matter 

 affects us. As we become conscious of Matter only through 

 that resistance which it opposes to our muscular energy, so 

 do we become conscious of the permanence of Matter only 

 through the permanence of this resistance; either as im- 

 mediately or as mediately proved to us. And this truth is 

 made manifest not only by analysis of the a posteriori 

 cognition, but equally so by analysis of the d priori one.* 



* Lest he should not have observed it, the reader must be warned that the 

 terms u d priori truth" and "necessary truth," as used in this work, are to 

 be interpreted not in the old sense, as implying cognitions wholly independent 

 of experiences, but as implying cognitions that have been rendered organic 

 by immense accumulations of experiences, received partly by the individual, 

 but mainly by all ancestral individuals whose nervous systems he inherits. 

 On referring to the Principles of Psychology (%% 426-433), it will be seen that 

 the warrant alleged for one of these irreversible ultimate convictions is that, 

 on the hypothesis of Evolution, it represents an immeasurably-greater accumu- 

 lation of experiences than can be acquired by any single individual. 



