592 APPENDIX. 



matter consists of centres of force without extension, is un- 

 thinkable. In the course of the argument I have pointed out 

 that though Boscovich's hypothesis cannot he realized in 

 thought, yet, on the other hand, the hypothesis of extended 

 atoms itself implies an imaginary separableness of each atom 

 into parts, and again of these into parts, and so on without 

 limit until unextended centres of force are reached: the con- 

 sciousness of force being that which alone perpetually emerges. 

 And I have ended by saying that " Matter then, in its ulti- 

 mate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and 

 Time." In the second part of the work, in chapters treating 

 of " The Indestructibility of Matter," " The Continuity of 

 Motion," and " The Persistence of Force," I have at some 

 length elaborated the view that Force is the ultimate com- 

 ponent of thought into which our conceptions of external 

 existences are resolvable. Summing up the first of these 

 chapters I have said — "thus, then, by the indestructibility 

 of matter, we really mean the indestructibility of the force 

 with which matter affects us." At the close of the second of 

 these chapters I have argued that " the continuity of motion, 

 as well as the indestructibility of matter, is really known to 

 us in terms of force " . . . " that which defies suppression in 

 thought, is really the force which the motion indicates." And 

 then in the third chapter, having shown how the truths that 

 matter is indestructible and motion continuous, can be known 

 to us only as corollaries from the truth that force is persistent 

 — that force is that " out of which our conceptions of Matter 

 and Motion are built " — I have gone on to say that " by the 

 Persistence of Force, we really mean the persistence of some 

 Power which transcends our knowledge and conception." 

 Throughout all which arguments the implication is that I 

 hold Matter and Motion to be conditioned manifestations of 

 this unknown Power. Being aware of the perversity of critics, 

 I have, in the " Summary and Conclusion," again endeavoured 

 to bar out misinterpretations. Here is one of the sentences 

 it contains: — 



" Over and over again it has been shown in various ways, that the 

 deepest truths we can reach, are simply statements of the widest uni- 

 formities in our experience of the relations of Matter, Motion, and Force ; 

 and that Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols of the Unknown 

 Reality. A Power of which the nature remains for ever inconceivable, and 

 to which no limits in Time or Space can be imagined, works in us certain 

 effects. These effects have certain likenesses of kind, the most general of 

 which we class together under the names of Matter, Motion, and Force." 



