52 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



electricity and it is not proper to avoid it by speculating 

 on matter in a state so special and so removed from 

 common experience as when it is radio-active or highly 

 vacuous. Now experience teaches us that matter added 

 to matter is always more matter; thus satisfying our 

 prime requisite for substance. This difference between 

 electricity and matter is sufficient to explain why the 

 term electrified matter is a real idea, and why material- 

 ized electricity means nothing. There is no more 

 justification for calling electricity a substance than there 

 is for doing the same thing for any other attribute of 

 matter, such as color or temperature. The simple fact 

 that matter appeals directly to our sense organs and 

 electricity does not should be sufficient to convince any- 

 one that our interpretation of nature, because of our 

 material and mental organization, must be based for 

 all time on a foundation of material substance and 

 not of electrical substance. The postulate of the ob- 

 jective existence of matter is a necessary hypothesis 

 and that of electricity is not. Is it to be supposed that, 

 because certain learned men find difficulty in explaining 

 some of the obscure actions of matter, the human race 

 is to cast aside an instinctive and universally accepted 

 axiom, any more readily than it will discard the idea 

 that the straight line is the shortest distance between 

 two points ; that parallel lines never intersect ; or that all 

 bodies require three, and only three, dimensions in 

 order to locate them; because a few modern ge- 



