14 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



been demonstrated. They amount, In fact, to an 

 enunciation of the truth that science is only now 

 reaching — that differences in matter are due not to 

 different primordial elements, but to differences of 

 shape, and position, and movement, and number, 

 in elements essentially identical. 



" Atomism," says Gomperz, " may be super- 

 seded ; the theory of cognition in its progress has 

 already weakened the distinction between primary 

 and secondary qualities ; but the attempt to cor- 

 relate all qualitative differences with differences of 

 size, and shape, and situation is destined to survive 

 all changes of opinion and thought. The exact 

 knowledge of nature rests entirely on this attempt to 

 reduce qualities to quantities, or, to speak more pre- 

 cisely, to establish fixed relations between the two." 



Two thousand years later the great Galileo had 

 the same great intuition, and wrote : "I do not 

 believe that anything else is required than magni- 

 tudes, shapes, quantities, and slow movements or 

 swift, to produce in us tastes, smells, sounds " ; 

 while, later, Huyghens assumed that bodies were 

 made of homogeneous matter, " in which no 

 qualities were distinguished, but only magnitudes, 

 shapes, and movements." 



And now, in modern days, as we have said, as 

 we shall see, this same hypothesis is the very pivot 

 of modern science. " Corporeal movements " — 



