OF MATTER. 69^ 



b^ considered, though' it at present seems Indis- 

 pensable to science, is really a fruitful source of 

 perplexities. For it appears that all we know of 

 Matter is the forces it exercises. Matter, therefore, 

 is said to be unknowable in' itself, and this unknow- 

 ableness of matter-in-itself is quoted in support of 

 the belief in the unknowable generally. And yet 

 it is perhaps hardly astonishing that a baseless^ 

 abstraction should be unknowable in itself And 

 Matter certainly is such an abstraction. For all; 

 that appears to us is bodies, which we call material: 

 They possess certain more or less obvious points 

 of resemblance, and the abstraction, '' Matter," is 

 promptly invented to account for them. But this 

 is not only a gross instance of abstract metaphysics, 

 but also a fiction which in the end profits us little. 

 Certain superficial aspects of bodies are taken and 

 exaggerated into primary qualities of Matter. The 

 hardness of bodies is explained by the hardness of 

 the ultimate particles of which they are composed, 

 their divisibility and compressibility by the empty 

 interstices between- these- ultimate atoms. So as the 

 final result bodies are to be explained by their com- 

 position out of atoms, possessing the attributes of 

 gravity, impenetrability, and inertia. 



These attributes, however, suffer severally from 

 the defects of being false, insufBcient, and unin- 

 telligible. No visible material body, e.g., is im- 

 penetrable or absolutely solid : all are more or less 

 compressible. So the atoms of absolute solidity 

 have been falsely invented, in order to explain a 

 property of bodies, which, after all, they were un- 

 able to explain ; viz., their relative solidity. For 

 the supposed solidity of the atoms Is, according to. 

 modern scientific views, utterly irrelevant to the 



