GENERAL MEETING. ol 
equation which expresses the fact that the work done by a body in 
falling the distance A is just that required to lift it through A against 
gravity. The fallacy involved in treating the numerical expression 
for force as force itself, has been well exposed by Mr. W. R. Browne 
(in a criticism of the same article, L. E. D. Phil. Mag. for Novem- 
ber, 1883); and the assumption that ratios are necessarily non- 
existent is even more fallacious. Were it trustworthy, Prof. Tait’s 
deductions would not be the only ones admissible. His equations 
would lead quite as conclusively to proofs of the non-objectivity 
of space and time (the former becoming the rate of work-units, 
the latter of motion-units, per unit of force), and so to a confirma- 
tion of the celebrated German view, that that which is universal 
and necessary in thought, belongs to the Subject; or they might 
even give mass in the form of a ratio, and hence suggest the non- 
objectivity of matter. 
Not the least of the Professor’s objections against force, it would 
appear, is that it is “sense-suggested.” It isa mere truism to say 
that no other suggestor is possible, within the domain of science, 
It is, perhaps, better worth while to call attention to the indubitable 
fact that the real, if not the avowed, ground of the objection 
against “action at a distance,” entertained by many physicists, is 
that such action is not directly suggested by sense-impressions. This 
is what they must mean by calling it “occult;” actions as our con- 
sciousness knows them, and as we can produce them, being gene- 
rally characterized by proximity undistinguishable from actual 
contact. Further, if there is any reproach in this epithet, energy 
is quite as open to it as any function of energy can be. In fact, 
our senses directly report work, in the form of nerve-disturbance, 
and nothing else. Force is no more truly an inference from nerve- 
reports testifying of energy exerted, than is matter. In fact, the 
‘inference of the independent existence of matter is the less direct — 
and more questionable of the two. The view advocated by Mr. 
Browne, following Boscovich, that matter is but “an assemblage 
of central forces, which vary with distance and not with time” or 
with direction, is one of great simplicity as well as suitability to 
analytic treatment, and one of which no disproof is possible. 
The paper was discussed by Messrs. DooLirTLe and Exiorr. 
