FOKCE. 191 



difficulty is shown by the fact that the question still 

 needs to be argued, and that the mass of men would 

 be at issue with the thinkers respecting it. But 

 from the point of view we have taken, at once the 

 truth of the statement, and the source of the diffi- 

 culty in receiving it, become obvious. If that which 

 only .^pears is felt by us as existing, our feeling 

 of force where it is not is an evident conseqence. 

 In truth, this feeling of force in nature is the very 

 expression of the fact of our feeling as existing that 

 which does not exist. It is rather that very feeling 

 itself; for it presents to us objects as at once passive 

 and yet acting as without power, and yet exerting 

 power. It is, indeed, precisely in consequence of 

 this feeling of force, and the merely mechanical 

 character which belongs to it, that men have ascribed 

 deadness to nature, and spoken of it as " dead 

 matter." The acceptance of force as arising only 

 within our own feeling is the conceding a spiritual 

 existence to that which is without. Thus the per- 

 suasion that force is in nature cannot be really given 

 up, but with the admission of an untruthfulness in 

 our feeling of existence. The two things are in- 



