116 THE DOCTRINE OF ENERGY 



sensible presentation consisted exclusively of one 

 continuous, unchanging phenomenon, Reason 

 would never be stimulated, and Personality, Cause, 

 Power would never have been postulated or con- 

 ceived. But the transmutation is constantly 

 " accelerated " incessantly fluctuates and varies. 

 Certain of these variations I recognise as related to 

 my own volitional activity, and I am thus furnished 

 with a key which enables me, by a sympathetic 

 analogy, to attribute all the changes in my experi- 

 ence to various agents, each related to the other 

 by the intervention of this system of physical 

 Energy. Some of these I can further trace to the 

 initiative of Volition of myself or other persons ; 

 others I can only recognise as integral parts of the 

 vast energetic system of Nature, the stimulus of 

 which I cannot follow further. 



The reality of Matter is said to be proved by its 

 indestructibility ; but this characteristic can easily 

 be resolved into (1) the indestructibility of Space and 

 Extension which we have seen to be merely another 

 name for the necessity or inevitable universality 

 of the general laws and conditions of Energy trans- 

 mutation, and (2) the indestructibility of the Energy 

 to the transmutations of which we attribute the 

 forces of Cohesion and Gravitation. 



All vital activity is but a producing of changes in 



