IIYPOTUESES. 289 



causes of motion still unresolved into one another; gravitation, heat, 

 electricity, chemical action, nervous action, and so forth ; but however 

 improbable it may be that these different modes of pi'oduction of mo- 

 tion should ever actually be resolved into one, the attempt so to resolve 

 them is perfectly legitimate. For though these various causes produce, 

 in other respects, sensations intrinsically different, and are not, there- 

 fore, capable of being resolved into one another, yet in so far as they 

 all produce motion, it is quite possible that the immediate antecedent 

 of the motion may in all these different cases be the same ; that the 

 other causes may produce motion through the intermediate agency of 

 heat, for instance, or of electricity, or of some common medium yet 

 to be discovered. 



We need not extend our illustration to other cases, as for instance 

 to the propagation of light, sound, heat, electricity, &c., through space, 

 or any of the other phenomena which have been found susceptible of 

 explanation by the resolution of their observed laws into more general 

 laws. Enough has been said to display the difference between the 

 kind of explanation and resolution of laws which is chimerical, and 

 that of which the accomplishment is the great aim of philosophy ; and 

 to show into what sort of elements the resolution must be effected, 

 if at all. 



§ 3. As, however, there is scarcely any of the principles of a true 

 method of philosophizing which does not require to be guarded against 

 errors on both sides, I must enter a caveat against another misapprehen- 

 sion, of a kind directly contrary to the preceding, and against which 

 there is tb'^i more necessity to be on our guard, as it has the appear- 

 ance of being countenanced (for I am persuaded that it is cmly the 

 appearance) by so great a thinker as M. Auguste Comte. That phi- 

 . losopher, among other occasions on which he has condemned, with 

 some asperity, any attempt to ex})lain phenomena which are " evidently 

 primordial" (meaning, ap^>arently, no more than that every such phe- 

 nomenon must have at least one peculiar and inexplicable law,) has 

 spoken of the attempt to furnish any explanation of the color belonging 

 to each substance, "la couleur elemcntaire propre a chaque substance," 

 as essentially illusory. " No one," says he, " in our time, attempts to 

 explain the particular specific gravity of each substance or of each 

 structure. WTiy should it be otherwise as to the specific color, the 

 notion of which is undoubtedly no less primordial?"* 



Now although, as M. Comte elsewhere observes, a color must al- 

 ways remain a different thing from a weight or a sound, it ought not 

 to be forgotten, and notwithstanding these expressions, cannot possibly 

 be forgotten by M. Comte, that varieties of color might nevertheless 

 follow, or correspond to, givon varieties of weight, or sound, or some 

 other phenomenon as different as these are from color .itself It is one 

 qu(!stion what a thing is, and another what it depends upcm ; and 

 although to ascertain the ccmditions of an elementary phenomenon is 

 not to obtain any new insight into the nature of the phenomenon itself, 

 that is no reason against attempting to discover the conditions. M. 

 Corat(!'s interdict against endeavoring to reduce distinctions of color to 

 any common pnnciple, would have held equally good against a like 



» Cours de Philosophic Positive, ii. 656. 



Oo 



