THE QUESTION STATED 



and redistributions of matter and motion ; and 

 in all our specific conclusions some general con- 

 clusion relating to movements of matter must 

 be directly or indirectly or very remotely in- 

 volved. 



Our course is thus still more definitely 

 marked out. We must first search for the 

 deepest attainable truth respecting matter and 

 motion abstractly considered. We must pursue 

 this truth and its corollaries, among the most 

 general groups of phenomena in which these 

 corollaries are exemplified, until we arrive at 

 some concrete result concerning the most gen- 

 eral aspects of that redistribution of matter and 

 motion which is everywhere going on. And 

 upon this concrete result we shall find that uni- 

 versal generalization to be based, the validity 

 of which we have afterwards to certify by its 

 agreement with inductions drawn from the sev- 

 eral groups of phenomena with which the con- 

 crete sciences deal. 



Here, before proceeding further*, we may fitly 

 pause for a moment, to relieve a puzzling doubt 

 which may ere this have disturbed the mind of 

 the reader. Did we not elaborately prove, in 

 our 6pening chapter, that concerning the move- 

 ments of molecules and their aggregation into 

 masses, not only nothing can be known, but no 

 tenable hypothesis can be framed ? Did we not, 

 with full knowledge of what we were doing, hang 

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