CHAPTER II. 



"MATTER" AND ITS PROPERTIES. 



T~N the introductory chapter, it has been shown that 

 -7 every object of sense-perception must necessarily 

 occupy space. It must, in other words, be extended. 

 We come, then, to ask, in the next place : What is the 

 necessary significance of this characteristic inhering in 

 the matter of sense-perception ? 



a. RESISTANCE OR REPULSION. 



To answer this question, we have but to reflect that 

 our impression of an object as extended is due primarily 

 to the resistance which the object offers to our activity. 

 Without such resistance we could never even know that 

 the object exists. 



But the resistance which an object presents to our 

 activity necessarily implies that the parts of which the 

 object, as a whole, is composed, must themselves be mutu- 

 ally resistant. I attempt to compress a given object. I 

 feel the object as resisting. That is, the object presents 

 itself to my consciousness as resistance. 



Thus the object, as object of perception, is not only, 

 by that fact, necessarily extended, and hence made up of 

 mutually exclusive parts ; but this very mutual exclusion 

 is found to be realized under the form of mutual resist- 

 ance. The entire body resists my efforts to compress it, 

 because the parts of which the body is composed resist 



