126 BULLETIN OF THE 



ANNUAL ADDRESS 



ON PHYSICS AND OCCULT QUALITIES, 

 By William B. Taylor. 



"Vis abdita qutedam." 



Lucretius. (De JR. N., lib. v. 1232.) 



1. The Dynamic and Kinematic Theories of Force. 



From the remarkable success of scientific investigation in assail- 

 ing the domain of darkness, — in continually bringing the phenom- 

 ena of nature more and more under the recognized empire of certain 

 necessary laws and principles, the induction seems natural that out. 

 standing mysteries — the ultimate constitution of matter, the nature 

 and genesis of life and of mind itself — must in time yield to the 

 same persistent siege of searching analysis, and be reduced to sub- 

 jection under the same government, as simple servitors of an all- 

 embracing mechanical philosophy. 



In recent years, a still further induction has been ventured upon 

 by some, to wit, that even the fundamental laws themselves of all 

 physical action must, when properly formulated, be interpreted by 

 simple mechanics ; — all properties of matter resolved into mass or 

 inertia, and finite extension or form, — all potentiality of matter into 

 varying modes of motion. And it has been strongly maintained by 

 this class of physicists, that until such consummation, the mind 

 must still be held in thrall of mysterious unimaginable powers, the 

 helpless devotee of " occult qualities " which science in the past has 

 so laboriously and successfully endeavored to relegate to the sha- 

 dowy limitary of metaphysics. This form of speculative doctrine, 

 (premonitions of which maybe traced back several hundred years,) 

 may now be regarded as having attained the importance and cohe- 

 sion of a school, numbering in its following a few quite eminent 

 disciples, who agree in denying the real existence of any inherent 

 " forces " in matter, and in holding such a designation to be merely 

 a convenient but provisional ideal abstraction. While on the other 

 hand the large majority of scientific thinkers (perhaps comprising 

 most of those who have reached the conservatism of middle age) 

 still adhere to the older conception of primeval " force " as an essen- 

 tial hypostasis of the operations of nature. And thus the battle so 



