CHAPTER I 

 THE QUESTION RESTATED ' 



A SYNTHESIS of scientific doctrines has 

 now been fairly constructed, in accord- 

 ance with the plan laid out in the elev- 

 enth chapter of our Prolegomena. We have 

 passed in review the sciences which deal with 

 the various orders of phenomena that make up 

 the knowable universe, and we have contem- 

 plated the widest truths which these sciences 

 severally reveal, as corollaries of an ultimate 

 truth. Before proceeding to expound our Cos- 

 mic Philosophy in its final results, let us briefly 

 sum up the leading conclusions at which we 

 have arrived. 



It has been proved to follow from that axiom 

 of the Persistence of Force upon which all phy- 

 sical science is based, that the mere coexistence 

 of innumerable discrete bodies in the universe, 

 exerting attractive and repulsive forces upon 

 each other, necessitates a perpetual rhythmical 

 redistribution of the Matter and Motion of which 

 the phenomenal universe is composed. It has 

 been proved that this eternal rhythm must of 

 ^ [See Introduction, § 28.] 



165 



