COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



up as the very sign-board of our fypovTicrrripiov 

 or philosophy - shop, the proposition that all 

 that either sense or reason can tell us concern- 

 ing the intimate structure of a block of wood 

 is utterly and hopelessly delusive ? Did we not 

 show that the hypothesis of attractive and re- 

 pulsive forces lands us straightway in an insolu- 

 ble contradiction ? Did we not find it impossi- 

 ble to get rid of the difficulties which surround 

 the conception of an atom or a molecule, 

 whether regarded as divisible or as indivisible ? 

 And did we not conclude that the conception 

 of matter acting upon matter is a pseud-concep- 

 tion which can by no effort be construed in con- 

 sciousness ? — Yet in spite of all this, it may be 

 said, we are about to base the entire following 

 Synthesis upon preliminary conclusions relating 

 to the movements of molecules and their aggre- 

 gation into masses ; we are likely to draw infer- 

 ences from the assumed intimate structure of 

 certain bodies ; we have inevitably to make use 

 of the hypothesis of attractive and repulsive 

 forces ; we shall constantly have tacit reference 

 to the conception of atoms and molecules ; and 

 we shall be obliged to take account of matter as 

 constrained in its movements by other neigh- 

 bouring matter. Is there not here, it may be 

 asked, a reductio ad ahurdum, either of the Syn- 

 thesis which is to follow, or of the initial argu- 

 ments upon which the claims of such a Synthesis 

 126 



