ADDRESS. 9 
physical nature excites feelings of the most acute intellectual gratification. 
The satisfaction it gives is almost esthetic in its intensity and quality. 
We feel the same sort of pleasurable shock as when from the crest of 
some melancholy pass we first see far below us the sudden glories of 
plain, river, and mountain. Whether indeed this vehement sentiment in 
favour of a simple universe has any theoretical justification, I will not 
venture to pronounce, There is no & priorz reason that I know of for 
expecting that the material world should be a modification of a single 
medium, rather than a composite structure built out of sixty or seventy 
elementary substances, eternal and eternally different. Why, then, 
should we feel content with the first hypothesis and not with the second ? 
Yet so itis. Men of science have always been restive under the multi- 
plication of entities. They have eagerly watched for any sign that the 
different chemical elements own a common origin, and are all compounded 
out of some primordial substance. Nor, for my part, do I think such 
instincts should be ignored. John Mill, if I rightly remember, was con- 
temptuous of those who saw any difficulty in accepting the doctrine of 
‘action at a distance.’ So far as observation and experiment can tell us, 
bodies do actually influence each other at a distance ; and why should they 
not? Why seek to go behind experience in obedience to some &@ priori 
sentiment for which no argument can be adduced? So reasoned Mill, and 
to his reasoning I have no reply. Nevertheless, we cannot forget that it 
was to Faraday’s obstinate disbelief in ‘action at a distance’ that we owe 
some of the crucial discoveries on which both our electric industries and 
the electric theory of matter are ultimately founded. While at this very 
moment physicists, however baffled in the quest for an explanation of 
_ gravity, refuse altogether to content themselves with the belief, so satisfy- 
ing to Mill, that it is a simple and inexplicable property of masses acting 
on each other across space. 
These obscure intimations about the nature of reality deserve, I think, 
more attention than has yet been given to them. That they exist is cer- 
tain ; that they modify the indifferent impartiality of pure empiricism can 
hardly be denied. The common notion that he who would search out the 
secrets of Nature must humbly wait on experience, obedient to its 
slightest hint, is but partly true. This may be his ordinary attitude ; 
but now and again it happens that observation and experiment are not 
treated as guides to be meekly followed, but as witnesses to be broken 
down in cross-examination. Their plain message is disbelieved, and the 
investigating judge does not pause until a confession in harmony with 
his preconceived ideas has, if possible, been wrung from their reluctant 
evidence. 
This proceeding needs neither explanation nor defence in those cases 
where there is an apparent contradiction between the utterances of expe- 
rience in different connections. Such contradictions must of course be 
reconciled, and science cannot rest until the reconciliation is effected, 
