GENERAL MEETING. 41 
found. I do not design to discuss the vortex atom here at length; 
for, although it is the most successful form of the Cartesian doctrine 
of vortical substance, it has not been perfected, and is generally 
regarded rather as an example of remarkable speculative and math- 
ematical ingenuity, than as a discovery, corresponding with any 
facts of objective physics. It has insuperable difficulties, some of 
which have been pointed out by Clifford, and others by Clerk- 
Maxwell. Moreover, unparticled or continuous substance, the 
necessary postulate in this hypothesis, is something we not only 
have no experience of, but find full of inconsistencies with ex- 
perience, when we gain a clear conception of what it implies. Such 
a conception fulfills Hegel’s paradox that being and non-being are 
the same, since it forbids all mobility, all differentiation, as was 
perceived by the followers of Democritus. It simply affords an 
inviting basis for analytical discussion, on account of the elimina- 
tion of the very conditions of objective existence which make the 
mathematical difficulty. 
There are some postulates regarding substance which we may 
probably be permitted to assume at the outset. We may postulate 
its objectivity, and also its discontinuity. I have no space to review _ 
here the time-worn controversy between continuous and discontin- 
uous substance. The arguments, which are exhaustive from the 
metaphysical side, are as old at least as Democritus and Anaxa- 
goras. Suffice it to say that modern experiential philosophy has 
decided the battle experimentally in favor of the discontinuity of 
matter. The dispute only lingers in the region of the atom, where 
observation cannot penetrate or has not penetrated. The inability 
to conceive which attaches to all non-experiential affairs is encoun- 
tered here, coupled with the too great facility of conceiving what 
is superficially observed, but will not bear analysis. Thus our first 
impressions of substance are in favor of its continuity. It is only 
after much reflection that we get the idea of necessary discontinu- 
ity, as bound up with the exhibition of existing phenomena. But 
the wonderful development of the Cartesian mathematics, in con- 
junction with the infinitesimal calculus, and its great facility in 
dealing with geometrical continuities, has tacitly revived the Car- 
tesian idea regarding the nature of matter, as synonymous with 
space relations, which never reached intelligible development at the 
hands of its author, and wholly declined and disappeared after the 
