GENERAL MEETING. 45 
the unit of mass finite magnitude, as this would be an experiential 
fact when ascertained. 
The remaining so-called properties of matter are too obviously 
transitory, accidental, or derivative to require attention. Color, 
luminosity, opacity, transparency, sapidity, sonority, odor, texture, 
temperature, diathermancy, plasticity, hardness, brittleness, density, 
compressibility, conductivity, malleability, fusibility, solubility, and 
many others, are too clearly but conditions of aggregation, or else 
mere subjective states due to the way the complicated interactions 
of the primary qualities affect our senses. What are the primary 
qualities ? 
Here is where the modern method of philosophy flags, by the 
disappearance one by one of the experimental means of approach, 
as we eliminate the non-essentials. But though the substance is 
thus elusory, we cannot yet believe it to be illusory. 
Chemical and molecular physics have already gone marvellously 
beyond the ordinary range of sense-perception, by strictly scientific 
methods. Not only is the discrete character of matter established, 
but many data of the differentia and organization of the molecule 
are discovered. Here is a vast field of science in itself. From the 
ideal molecule, or simple couple, up through the 70 actual organized 
molecules of our provisional elements, then the chemical molecules 
of their combinations in vast numbers, discovered and undiscovered, 
and, lastly, the enormously complex organic molecule in infinite 
variety, the domain transcends in area for classification that of 
biologic science. The simple molecule has not yet been discovered, 
much less the molecular constituent, the atom, or the indivisible. 
It is evident, however, that the properties of matter which are 
essential, not differential, must reside in the atom. The philoso- 
phers succeeding Newton treated the atom and the elementary 
molecule as one, from lack of sufficient chemical knowledge. We 
are on a higher plane of information, but their method is not nec- 
essarily vitiated by such lack of distinction. 
We cannot, as before said, attribute @ priori to the atom dimen- 
sion or figure, though we postulate it to aid conception. As the 
atom is an absolute unit, there is incongruity in finally assigning to 
it such relative attributes, which are but matters of comparison 
and degree. There are properties, however, which are inseparable 
from an absolute essence. These are the properties by which the 
