ON MATTER AND FORCE. 11 



The second or transition stage of ideas consists 

 in an incomplete separation between the ideas 

 of matter and force. 



In this stage, force is considered as altogether 

 separable from ponderable matter, but actually 

 to consist of, or to be perfectly inseparable 

 from an imponderable asther, gas, or fluid, 

 which is capable of being attached for a time to 

 the ponderable matter. 



The first trace of the idea that force is 

 imponderable matter seems to have started from 

 Kepler : he used it to account for the motions 

 of the planets. He thought that a current of 

 fluid matter circulated round the sun, carrying 

 the planets with it like a boat in a stream. He 



Johann Schonherr felt that he had got the results of nature 

 in his grasp. Light is the male vivifier ; water the female, 

 the nurse. These two arch-beings, the supreme male and 

 supreme female, bound in eternal and in necessary wedlock, 

 explain everything ; for in this great wedlock of principles 

 lies the only chance of the seed of things being brought to 

 life. Schonherr felt that this sudden gift of insight was no 

 accident of tune and place. It must be more : a revelation 

 from on high ; a working of celestial love in his soul ; a 

 pouring of the divine will into his spirit. One day he went 

 to Emmanuel Kant, to whom he wished to make known his 

 grand secret, that all living things consist of light and water. 

 ' Yery well,' said the expounder of pure reason, ' have you 

 tried to live on them ?' " Dixon. 



