PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 17 







on certain points the surest of all teachers, can mark any 

 clear boundary line. Those who have sought to decipher 

 or define these proximate relations of matter and mind have 

 but substituted barren words for the realities of knowledge. 

 Mr. Baden Powell himself, while stretching the domain of 

 physical causes to the total phenomena of animal life, yet 

 finds a limit here ; and somewhat abruptly closes his argu- 

 ment by observing that the assertion of a moral and spiritual 

 nature in man refers essentially to ( a different order of 

 things, apart from and transcending any material ideas 

 whatsoever.' To some such conclusion, however expressed, 

 all must come who honestly and reasonably approach this 

 question. 



We have dwelt thus long on the subject of the physical 

 forces the * imponderables ' of former systems as illus- 

 trating at once a great doctrine of modern science, and the 

 general spirit of philosophy at the present time. We are 

 far, however, from having exhausted the subject. Questions 

 crowd round and converge upon it from every side ; some of 

 these so subtle in kind that we might well call them meta- 

 physical, but for the caution ever needful in admitting this 

 term into the domain of science. Such are, to state briefly a 

 few of them, the question whether forces can exist, except 

 in connection with matter, and manifested by its changes ? 

 whether what we call forces may, intelligibly and consistently 

 with phenomena, be regarded simply as molecular actions, 

 or modes of motion in matter ? whether (to revert to a 

 question urged before) they can ever by possibility be 

 annulled or even rendered latent ? whether, in admitting 

 this constant combination and convertibility of forces, we 

 do not virtually admit a constant amount of force, variously 

 manifested, to be always present in the universe ? and 

 whether, in such case, we can ever rightly speak of an 

 initial force, otherwise than in the sense of those acts of 



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