Does Matter Exist? 



weight and inertia. All matter, we are told, is 

 heavy. Now the piece of chalk which we 

 mentioned above would lose its weight if it were 

 taken to the centre of the earth, and the same 

 would happen if it were placed at a suitable 

 distance between the earth and the moon, or the 

 earth and the sun; would it then cease to be 

 matter? Here is something to give one pause, 

 but what is more serious still, a profound 

 mystery cloaks everything connected with 

 weight. What is weight? We are in absolute 

 ignorance regarding it. We know that a stone 

 falls, we do not know why it falls. The exist- 

 ence of forces hooked on like springs between all 

 material bodies is a childish hypothesis. Though 

 we do not know the true nature of weight, we 

 feel confusedly that it does not dwell within the 

 heavy bodies, but outside them; in other words, 

 that it is the result of a pressure exerted on 

 bodies by the immaterial medium, which has 

 been named ether, and to which we shall return 

 later. 



We are also in the habit of saying, on the 

 strength of official science, that matter is inert 

 andthat this is one of its characteristic properties. 



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