AND ITS SELF-CONSEKVATION. 41 



any effort, either to bring them into mutual mclusion, or 

 to alter their positions relatively to one another. 



In other words, while the mutual resistance of the 

 component parts of a body would seem, on first view, to 

 be a merely positive characteristic, consisting of the sim- 

 ple action of a force from the center outward, it really 

 proves, on further examination, to be quite as much neg- 

 ative as positive. It is not merely that the body holds 

 together in a given positive form, but also that each com- 

 ponent part excludes every other part. And in this 

 respect the parts or particles are negative, as toward 

 one another, and thus give to matter the negative, or 

 at least negatively named, characteristic, of impenetrabil- 

 ity. That is, so far as we regard matter merely under 

 the aspect of resistance, it is evident that we can have no 

 doubt of the impossibility of any two bodies ever occupy- 

 ing the same space at the same time. 



Apparently, then, the truth of anything I can know as 

 a body is found in the characteristic of resistance, or, 

 otherwise named, repulsion. And yet I have but just 

 noticed that the resistance which any given body offers to 

 any effort I may make to change its form consists in part 

 of the resistance which the parts composing the body pre- 

 sent to any change in their positions relatively to' one 

 another. But this can only mean that the parts are 

 positively connected with one another, that they hold fast 

 upon one another so as to hinder my efforts to bring 

 them into a relatively different position. That is, they 

 attract, as well as repel, one another. 



Besides, were the negative characteristic of repulsion 

 the sole truth of bodies, we must be driven to a conclu- 

 sion wholly at variance with the very idea of body. For 



