276 MAN AND THE WORLD. 



capable df being cleared of their contradictions, 

 because they have only a relative validity in the 

 phenomenal world, and the phenomenal world 

 taken by itself is full of contradictions. Science 

 therefore need not concern itself to pursue its 

 assumptions beyond the point at which they are 

 most useful practically, nor attempt the hopeless task 

 of solving the :perplexities which arise when it is 

 essayed to give them an ontological validity. And 

 this is the true answer to the sceptical criticism of the 

 first principles of science (ch. iii. §§ 6-1 1). Hence 

 it will be sufficient to assume as many undulating 

 agencies as are requisite to explain the phenomena 

 of light and electricity, without troubling whether 

 the assumption of the reality of a luminlferous ether 

 would not involve impossibilities. The difficulties 

 inherent in the conceptions of Matter, Motion, and 

 Infinity, puzzles like that of ^the infinitude of the 

 material universe, of the infinite divisibility of 

 Matter and the relativity of Motion, lose their 

 sting, when we cease to imagine that the facts with 

 which they are concerned are ultimate. It is enough 

 to know that we shall never get 'to the end of the 

 world, or come to a particle we cannot divide. 



But though Matter ultimately be but a form of 

 the Evolution of Spirit, difficulties remain in plenty. 

 Before the reconciliation can be considered com- 

 plete, e.g., it Is necessary to determine the nature 

 of the Intellityence which Matter Is divined to 

 conceal, and to discover what is the function of 

 this disguise of Spirit. 



§ 21. After the dispersion of the doubts which 

 Scepticism had cast on the first principles of science, 

 we must consider the nature of the Intelligence of 

 the Force-atoms. It is possible either to regard 



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