66 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



greater. Continue this process until the matter is all 

 gone, and there is left a sphere of something with an 

 apparent mass still moving through the fluid. Will 

 it not be difficult to persuade anyone that the something 

 moving did not vanish simultaneously with the mar- 

 terial sphere that the attribute did not vanish with 

 the entity? It will be just as hard to convince the 

 future scientist, when the vogue of the electrical theory 

 departs, that an electrical charge remains after the elec- 

 trified matter is reasoned away. Such ideas leave us 

 in the same foolish state as the hunters of the Snark, 

 who, after incredible labors, came to the place where 

 a Snark should be, and found it was a Boojum which 

 vanished silently away. 



If I am correct in believing the fallacy to lie in try- 

 ing to explain natural laws, it is not pertinent to 

 inquire further into the working of this electrical 

 hypothesis. The essential point is whether physics has 

 anything to do with the nature of matter and elec- 

 tricity. Atoms and ethers of any kind are metaphys- 

 ical creations; the mechanical models built on such an 

 unsubstantial foundation require a god to set them go- 

 ing, and are, at best, an ineffectual means of describing 

 phenomena previously observed, and not finger-posts 

 to new discoveries. 



The claim, that such arguments as this are ineffectual 

 criticism because they tend to destroy the scientific 

 method most used and offer nothing better in its stead. 



