Ixxviii , RESORT — 1872. 



arise in a race of Savages wlio cannot count beyond five ? Or, again, in the 

 history of the very earliest years of Mozart, who can fail to recognize the 

 dawji of that glorious Genius, whose brilliant but brief career left its im- 

 perishable impress on the Art it enriched ? But who would be bold enough 

 to affirm that an infant Mozart could be born amongst a tribe, whose only 

 musical instrument is a tom-tom, whose only song is a monotonous chant ? 



Again, by tracing the gradual genesis of some of those Ideas which we now 

 accept as "self-evident," — such, for example, as that of the " Uniformity of 

 Nature " — we are able to recognize them as the expressions of certain Intel- 

 lectual tendencies, which have progressively augmented in force in successive 

 generations, and now manifest themselves as acquired Mental Instincts that 

 penetrate and direct our ordinary course of Thought. Such Instincts constitute 

 a precious heritage, which has been transmitted to us with ever-increasing 

 value through the long succession of preceding generations ; and which it is 

 for us to transmit to those who shall come after i;s, with all that further in- 

 crease which our higher Culture and wider range of Knowledge can impart. 



And now, having studied the working action of the Human Intellect in 

 the Scientific Interpretation of Nature, we shall examine the general character 

 of its products ; and the first of these with which we shall deal is our con- 

 ception of Hatter and of its relation to Force. 



The Psychologist of the present day views Matter entirely through the 

 light of his own Consciousness : his idea of Matter in the abstract being that 

 it is a " something " which has a permanent power of exciting Sensations ; 

 his idea of any " property " of Matter being the mental representation of 

 some kind of sensory impression he has received from it; and his idea 

 of any particular kind of Matter being the representation of the whole 

 aggregate of the Sense-perceptions which its presence has called up in his 

 Mind. Thus when I press my hand against this table, I recognize its 

 unyieldingness through the conjoint medium of my sense of Touch, my 

 Muscidar sense, and my Mental sense of EiFort, to which it wiU be convenient 

 to give the general designation of the Tactile Sense ; and I attribute to that 

 table a hardness which resists the efi'ort I make to press my hand into its 

 substance, whilst I also recognize the fact that the force I have employed ia 

 not sufficient to move its mass. But I press my hand against a lump of 

 dough ; and finding that its substance yields under my pressure, I call it 

 soft. Or again, I press my hand against this desk ; and I find that although 

 I do not thereby change its form, I change its pZace ; and so I get the Tactile 

 idea of Motion. Again, by the impressions received through the same 

 Sensorial apparatus, when I lift this book in my hand, I am led to attach to 

 it the notion of weight or ponderosity ; and by lifting diflerent solids of about 

 the same size, I am enabled, by the different degrees of exertion I find 

 myself obliged to make in order to sustain them, to distinguish some of them 

 as ligJif, and others as heavy. Through the medium of another set of Sense- 

 perceptions which some regard as belonging to a different category, we dis- 

 tinguish between bodies that feel " hot " and those that feel " cold ; " and in 

 this manner we arrive at the notion of differences of Temperature. And 

 it is through the medium of our Tactile Sense, without any aid from Visionj 

 that we first gain the idea of solid form, or the Three Dimensions of Space. 



Again, by the extension of our Tactile experiences, we acquire the notion 

 of liquids, as forms of matter yielding readily to pressure, but possessing a, 

 Bensible weight which may equal that of solids : and of air, whose resisting 

 power is much slighter, and whose weight is so small that it can only be 

 made sensible by artificial means. Thus, then, we arrive at the notions of 



