SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE. 169 



ingly accepted in thought as a valid basis for our reason- 

 ings; which, when rightly carried on, will bring us to truths 

 that have a like relative reality the only truths which con- 

 cern us or can possibly be known to us. 



Concerning Time, relative and absolute, a parallel argu- 

 ment leads to parallel conclusions. These are too obvious to 

 need specifying in detail. 



48. Our conception of Matter, reduced to its simplest 

 shape, is that of co-existent positions that offer resistance ; as 

 contrasted with our conception of Space, in which the co- 

 existent positions offer no resistance. We think of Body as 

 bounded by surfaces that resist; and as made up through- 

 out of parts that resist. Mentally abstract the co-existent 

 resistances, and the consciousness of Body disappears; leav- 

 ing behind it the consciousness of Space. And since the 

 group of co-existing resistent positions constituting a por- 

 tion of matter, is uniformly capable of giving us impressions 

 of resistance in combination with various muscular adjust- 

 ments, according as we touch its near, its remote, its right, 

 or its left side; it results that as different muscular adjust- 

 ments habitually indicate different co-existences, we are 

 obliged to conceive every portion of matter as containing 

 more than one resistent position that is, as occupying 

 Space. Hence the necessity we are under of representing 

 to ourselves the ultimate elements of Matter as being at 

 once extended and resistent: this being the universal form 

 of our sensible experiences of Matter, becomes the form 

 which our conception of it cannot transcend, however 

 minute the fragments which imaginary subdivisions pro- 

 duce. Of these two inseparable elements, the resist- 

 ance is primary, and the extension secondary. Occupied ex- 

 tension, or Body, being distinguished in consciousness from 

 unoccupied extension, or Space, by its resistance, this attri- 

 bute must clearly have precedence in the genesis of the 

 idea. Such a conclusion is, indeed, an obvious corollary 



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