PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 165 



abolishes or in the slightest degree diminishes his insuperable nes- 

 cience of the ultimate, — but imitates the ostrich, and deludes 

 himself.* 



When men not yet emancipated from the realism of mediaeval 

 scholasticism began to turn their attention from the dreams of 

 ontology to the actualities of sensible phenomena, it is scarcely to 

 be woudered at that to every abstracted property of things around 

 them, they gave " a local habitation and a name ; " until the ban- 

 ished Nereids and Oreads, the Naiads aud Dryads, the Sylphs and 

 Gnomes, of poetic fable, were re-habilitated in a very pantheon of 

 " occult qualities." When in a later age a larger observation and 

 a more mathematical logic replaced these entities by more mechani- 

 cal conceptions, it is perhaps as little surprising — in the momentum 

 of re-action — that the term " occult quality " should become a 

 shibboleth of aversion, of apprehension, and of opprobrium, the 

 imputation of which should disturb the philosophy of even a New- 

 ton. But that we of the nineteenth century, — capable of under- 

 standing and of estimating at their approximate value the limits of 

 these oscillations of intellectual kinetics, should be equally the 

 timid servitors of a vocabulary — seems less excusable. Whether 

 the intended reproach be applied to the existence of demonstrated 

 qualities, or more critically to their cause and mode of action, is 

 practically of little consequence. Let it be frankly avowed, — let 

 it be boldly heralded, that in their essence all the primal qualities 

 of matter are " occult ; " and must of necessity forever remain so. 

 Let it be recognized — with a fitting modesty— .that this veil of Isis 

 shall never be removed by mortal hands.f 



*The continental philosophers of the seventeenth century desired not 

 only to abolish the fanciful qualities of bodies invented by their predeces- 

 sors, but (as has been well said) " they tried also to abolish their own ignor- 

 ance of the causes of the sensible qualities of matter. They would not 

 have occult causes, and Leibnitz plainly confounds occult quality with oc- 

 cult cause. But it is needless to dwell upon the fact that the ultimate 

 causes of all qualities are occult." English Cyclopaedia — Division of Arts 

 and Sciences : art. "Attraction : " vol. I, col. 739.) 



"j" Tov ifiov xinAov oudsig -to dvyros d-e/.d^oc/'s. — Inscription in the tem- 

 ple of Athene-Isis, at Sais on the Nile. "My veil no mortal ever with- 

 drew." 



" In bodies we see only their figures and colors, [etc.] ... but their 

 inward substances are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex 



