MATTER ULTIMATELY REDUCIl^LE TO SPIRIT. 275 



motion are even more replete with .contradiction and 

 perplexity, and to explain Force in terms of cause 

 and motion is to explain what is imperfectly known 

 in terms of what is still less known. When we 

 assert that the Becoming of things is due to the 

 action of forces, we can form some sort of inadequate 

 idea of how the process works, but we have not the 

 least idea of what causation consists in as soon as we 

 rigidly exclude all human analogies. To use caus- 

 ation without a reference to our own wills is to use 

 a category which has been reduced to a mere word 

 without meaning, a category, moreover, the use of 

 which involves us in the inextricable difficulties 

 of an infinite regress. 



§ 20. If, on the other hand,. we admit that Matter 

 may be resolved into forces, and that the only pos- 

 sible substratum of Force is intelligence, the way is 

 open for a reconciliation of the metaphysics of Ideal- 

 ism with the requirements of science. Idealism 

 admits the phenomenal reality of the " material " 

 world, and science recognizes that it has neither 

 need nor right to assert its ultimate reality. The 

 unity of philosophy and of the universe is vindicated 

 by the discovery of the fundamental identity of 

 Matter and Spirit, and the ultimate reduction of the 

 former to the latter. 



And not only has science no need to assert the 

 ultimate reality of Matter, but it actually benefits, 

 in a hardly less degree than metaphysics, from the 

 interpretation of the phenomena of Matter we have 

 propounded. If Matter is not and can not be an 

 ultimate mode of being, it follows that the pseudo- 

 metaphysical speculations as to its ultimate consti- 

 tution lead only to a loss of time and temper. The 

 conceptions of atoms, ether, space, etc., are not 



