Stoney — Natural Science and Ontology. 509 



Now, motions are by far the most important part of the pheno- 

 menal hypotheton ; for scientific investigation has brought to light 

 the significant facts which are described in common language by 

 saying that men and animals receive their sensations of sound from 

 motion in the air, of light from motion in the aether, and in the 

 same way their other sensations from motions somewhere in Nature. 

 This, put into less objectionable language, is equivalent to the 

 statement that the auta or autic events of the sense-compelling 

 universe which produce in me the sensation of sound through one 

 channel of communication, viz. through my sense of hearing, are 

 such as are also competent to produce in me through other chan- 

 nels, namely, through my senses of sight and touch, another 

 tekmerion, viz. the perception of motion ; or, at least, differ only 

 from those autic causes which are capable of producing an actual 

 perception of motion through those senses, in the way that the 

 autic cause of the perception of a small motion differs from the 

 autic cause of the perception of a similar motion on a larger scale. 



These remarkable discoveries have led scientific men to enter- 

 tain a new and very important view of Nature, in which it is 

 regarded as made up of objects each of which consists of almost 

 inconceivably minute and swift motions. These and the drifting 

 about in space of some objects, t. e. of some masses of internal 

 motions, are the whole of this hypotheton. It may be regarded as 

 the utmost simplification of which the shadows cast within the 

 human mind by the sense-compelling autic universe are suscep- 

 tible. If the phenomenal hypothesis is to be likened to reducing 

 the shadows of the great machine to order by providing a screen 

 that is flat and of adequate size, we may continue the metaphor 

 and regard the new hypothesis as making the further improvement 

 — the utmost possible — which is effected by condensing the source 

 of light into a point, and by bringing it and the screen which 

 receives the shadows into the very best available positions. 



The remarkable hypothesis described in the last paragraph may 

 appropriately be called the Diacrinomenal Hypothesis, as it has 

 discriminated between the various tekmeria produced within us by 

 the autic universe, and has selected for further synthesis one out 

 of the number — our perception of motion — on the ground that it, 

 and that it alone, is able by itself and without being mixed up with 

 other tekmeria to people Nature with objects which are complete as 



2 Q2 



