568 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



and colouring which is due to its origin in our sensa- 

 tions ; and it was not clearly seen that the very same 

 attributes which made the word so expressive in com- 

 mon conversation and the descriptive sciences were just 

 those misleading features which had to be got rid of 

 or eliminated before the term could become useful in 

 the exact and logically progressive sciences. It was 

 not seen that the mathematical definition of force 

 makes the term inapplicable and useless except in cases 

 where visible and tangible matter and motion in space 

 are clearly distinguishable. In fact, the mathematically 

 calculable forces of nature meant nothing else than the 

 motions of something in space, and where neither 

 motion nor location in space exist at all, as in mental 

 phenomena, or w^here they are only incompletely defined, 

 as in many biological processes, the whole mathematical 

 theory of forces is inapplicable. In the early stages of 

 the materialistic controversy the word force governed 

 popular philosophy through a misunderstanding : it 

 appeared, as it were, under false colours. 



This false position which the notion of force retained 

 in popular estimation was strengthened by a further 

 conception which had been introduced into the mechan- 

 ical sciences about the time when Lagrange put the 

 Newtonian laws of motion into a final mathematical 

 expression : this was the atomic hypothesis upon which 

 modern chemistry was founded, and which was taken 

 for granted by the whole school of naturalists on the 

 Continent. This hypothesis permitted or even forced 

 the natural philosopher to look upon all those hidden 

 processes, which neither the naked nor the fortified 



