ON MATTER, FORCE, AND MOTION IN SPACE. 61 



Looking to the whole subject just discussed, we are 

 forced to admit, notwithstanding all the genius and 

 labour given to it, that the ultimate truths it involves 

 are still wanting to us. Our reason here lies very 

 much at the mercy of language. We have got hold of 

 certain words needed to express the great elements 

 acting in the natural world. Of these strangely-fated 

 terms which we employ to expound the deepest mys- 

 teries of nature, the word Force is the most mysteri- 

 ous expressing a reality of action in time and space 

 present wherever matter and motion are, and known 

 to us but through these emanating from life and 

 mind as well as inanimate nature yet strictly speak- 

 ing a name only to our understanding. It is a name, 

 however, betokening relations on which the highest 

 philosophy may fitly employ itself; subject to those 

 restrictions which only the highest philosophy can 

 discern and submit to. It is matter of curious specu- 

 lation whether future research will ever bring us to a 

 clear comprehension of the power or powers we thus 

 denominate of their relations to matter throughout 

 the universe, and of the connexions they establish be- 

 tween more material, phenomena, and the higher 

 attributes of life, mind, and will. No avenue is yet 

 discernible to this ultimate truth. Fresh analogies 

 may come to light, and new correlations of pheno- 

 mena ; but the question of primary cause still unceas- 

 ingly starts up, ' What is Force in itself ? ' to answer 

 which question truly and intelligibly is hardly, I think, 

 permitted to the present powers of man. 



