SKEPTICISM AND IDOLATRY 205 



lation? As an example of what absurdities are ad- 

 vanced in speculative physics, I give his final utterance 

 on the existence and nature of matter, which he de- 

 livered in a lecture on the " New Mechanics " : " We 

 can almost say that there is no longer matter, but only 

 holes in the ether ; and in so far as these holes seem to 

 play an active part, it consists in the inability of these 

 holes to change their location without influencing the 

 surrounding ether which exerts a reactive influence on 

 such changes." 



What to make of such a statement passes under- 

 standing. There was once a man who pestered the 

 students in Baltimore by giving them tracts which 

 proved in fifty-seven or more different ways that the 

 earth was hollow, and that we lived on the inside, and 

 so in a hole. But not even he was so confused as to 

 contend that we were holes living on the outside of a 

 hole. Poincare has, of course, no resemblance to that 

 man and yet, unless he means something by the word 

 " hole " which is understood exclusively by himself and 

 a small coterie of physicists who write in the same 

 absurd fashion, there is no more sense in his definition 

 of matter. If there were any connection between 

 the words and the idea that is, if he were trying to 

 define the word matter so as to express our experience 

 of it, then his statement makes matter the answer to 

 the old conundrum : " What is it, the more you take 

 from it, the more it be? " I admit matter is not ether ; 



