

A CRITICISM. 17 



cepts thus erected into actualities are composed of purely imaginary attri- 

 butes of which no one has had any experience an undulatory ether in 

 the one case, a hard and perfectly elastic atom in the other. The total 

 result is of course just - what we see Science landing itself in pure 

 absurdities in every direction. Beginning by detaching the attribute of 

 falling from the bodies that fall beginning that is by an abstraction, 

 which of course is also a falsity it generalises and generalises this abstrac- 

 tion till at last it reaches a perfectly generalised absurdity and thing with- 

 out any meaning the law of gravitation. The statement that " every 

 particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force propor- 

 tional to the mass of the attracting particle and inversely proportional to 

 the square of the distance between the two " is devoid of meaning the 

 human mind can give no definite meanings to the words "mass," 

 "attract," and "force," which do not stultify each other. The law in 

 every way baffles intelligence. Newton, who invented it, declared that 

 no philosophic mind would suppose that bodies could thus act on one 

 another i( without the mediation of anything else by and through which 

 their action might be conveyed; " scientific men to-day are fain to see that 

 a material mediation of this kind would only make the law still more 

 unintelligible than it is, while, on the other hand, an immaterial mediation 

 or a fourth-dimensional mediation, such as some propose, would simply 

 remove the problem out of the regions of scientific analysis. Again the 

 form of the law is declared to be the inverse square of the distance ; but 

 this is the law by the nature of space itself of any perfect radiation, and if 

 true of gravitation involves the conclusion that that radiation of force 

 (whatever its nature may be) takes place without loss or dissipation of 

 any kind. This would make gravitation absolutely unique among 

 phenomena. More than this, its propagation is supposed to be instanta- 

 neous over the most enormous distances of space, and to take place always 

 unhindered and unretarded whatever be the number or the nature of the 

 bodies between ! What can be more clear than that the law is simply 

 metaphysical a projection into a monstrous universality and abstraction, 

 of partially understood phenomena in a particular region of observation 

 a Brocken-shadow on the background of Nature of the observer's own 

 momentary attitude of thought ? 



Again, the undulatory theory of Light. Studying the phenomena of a 

 vast number of colored and bright bodies, Science finds that it can think 

 about these phenomena can generalise and tie them into bundles best 

 by assuming that the bodies are all in a state of vibration ; a vibration so 

 minute that (unlike the vibrations connected with Sound) it cannot be 

 directly perceived. So far good. There is no harm in the assumption of 

 vibration as long as it is understood to be a mere assumption for a tem- 

 porary convenience of thought. But now Science goes farther than this, 

 and not only supposes a common attribute to all visible bodies, but credits 

 this common attribute with a real existence independent of the visible 



