59* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that it is very hard for us to perceive the strangeness, yes, the 

 absurdity of it. When we reflect that all we know of any par- 

 ticular substance is of its properties, we see that the thought 

 that it is still present, but has no longer any of its properties, 

 is not far removed from pure nonsense. In fact, this purely 

 formal conception only serves to help us harmonize the general 

 facts of chemical processes, particularly the stoichiometrical laws 

 of mass, with the arbitrary conception of a matter unchangeable 

 in itself. 



But even with this extended conception of matter and the ne- 

 cessary corollaries besides, we can not comprehend the mass of phe- 

 nomena not once in inorganic Nature. Matter is thought of as 

 something at rest, unchangeable; in order to reconcile this 

 thought with the view of the constantly changing world, we have 

 to complement it with another, independent of it, which shall 

 bring changeableness to pass. Such a supplementary idea was set 

 forth by Galileo, the creator of scientific physics, in the concep- 

 tion of force, as the constant cause of motion. Galileo had discov- 

 ered a highly important invariant for the variable phenomena of 

 free and induced falling. By the application of a self-existing 

 gravity, the effects of which continuously accumulate, he made the 

 complete explanation of these processes possible. The pregnancy 

 of this conception was demonstrated by Newton, who, with his 

 thought that the same force was operative as a function of the dis* 

 tance between the heavenly bodies, conquered the whole visible stel- 

 lar world for science. This advance it was, chiefly, which aroused 

 the conviction that all other physical phenomena could be ac- 

 counted for in the same way as those of astronomy by the same 

 auxiliary. Then when it resulted, further, at the beginning of 

 our century, through the labors of a number of eminent astrono- 

 mers, principally French, not only that Newton's law of gravita- 

 tion could account for the motions of the heavenly bodies in their 

 larger features, but that it sustained the closer and far more 

 thorough second test of accounting for the deviations from the 

 typical forms of motion, the perturbations, the confidence in 

 the fruitf ulness of this conception was increased in an extraordi- 

 nary measure. What could be more readily suggested than 

 the supposition that the theory which had been competent to 

 account so completely for the motions of the great world was also 

 the right and only means of reducing the processes in the smaller 

 world of atoms to scientific control ? Thus arose the mechanical 

 view of Nature, according to which all phenomena, especially in 

 inanimate Nature, were traced back ultimately to the motions of 

 atoms under the same laws as were recognized for the heavenly 

 bodies. It was a necessary consequence that this conception of 

 the realm of inorganic Nature should be applied to animate Nature 



