January 27, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



125 



five psychic faculties: (1) sensation, (2) 

 perception, (3) apprehension, (4) reflec- 

 tion and (5) ideation." P. 418. 



' ' These five psj'chic faculties arise in the 

 mind through the cognition of the five 

 properties of the ultimate particles of 

 matter. Every body, whether it be a 

 stellar system or an atom of hydrogen, has 

 certain fundamental characteristics found 

 in all. These are number, space, motion, 

 time (p. 13), and (p. 14) the fifth property 

 here called judgment." 



"All particles of plants, soils and stars 

 have judgment as consciousness and 

 choice ; but having no organization for the 

 psychical functions, they have not recollec- 

 tion or inference ; thej', therefore, do not 

 have intellections or emotions. Only ani- 

 mal beings liave these psychical functions. 

 Molecules, stars, stones and plants do 

 not think ; that which we have attributed 

 to them as consciousness and choice is only 

 the judgment of particles, but it is the 

 ground, the foundation, the substrate of 

 that which appears in animals when they 

 are organized for conception." P. 413. 



"These things are necessary to a primitive 

 judgment : First, a sense impression ; sec- 

 ond, a consciousness of that impression ; 

 third, a desire to know its cause ; fourth, a 

 choice of a cause; fifth, a consciousness of 

 the concept of that cause ; sixth, a com- 

 parison of one conscious term with the 

 other; and seventh, a judgment of likeness 

 or of unlikeness." 



For all I know, that which chemists call 

 afiinity may be the ' choice of particles to 

 associate in bodies.' All the chemist tells 

 us of the matter is that the word ' afiinity ' 

 is a sign or symbol to generalize his obser- 

 vations and experiments, and it is clear 

 that this is no reason why he who finds 

 reason to do so may not regard it as evi- 

 dence of consciousness and choice. The 

 question the chemist is likely to ask is 

 whether Major Powell can so play on the 



emotions of an atom of hydrogen as to per- 

 suade it to do anything which we have 

 not every reason to expect in course of na- 

 ture. If he cannot do this his hypothesis is 

 worthless, not because we can disprove it, 

 but because we find no evidence of its truth 

 and no value in its practical application. 

 In fact, it seems to me to be one of the 

 ' reified voids ' of which he has warned 

 us. 



" The Utes say that the Sun could once 

 go where he pleased, but when he came 

 near the people he burned them. Tevots, 

 the Eabbit-god, fought with the Sun and 

 compelled him to travel by an appointed 

 path along the surface of the sky, so that 

 there might be night and day." 



Truly, " It is a good divine that follows 

 his own instruction. If to do were as easy 

 as to know what were good to do, chapels 

 had been chui'ches, and poor men's cottages 

 princes' palaces. I can easier teach twenty 

 what were good to be done than be one of 

 the twenty to follow mine own teach- 

 ing." 



Powell tells us that he has been robbed 

 of his ' beautiful world ' by Bishop Berkelej', 

 but his attempt to neutralize the evils of 

 ' idealism ' by a new philosophy seems to 

 me to be anything but a happy one, for the 

 application of his own principles to his 

 system of philosophy seems to carry ideal- 

 ism to dizzy heights where even Berkeley 

 never dared to soar. 



If every particle of matter has conscious 

 judgment of number, space, motion and 

 time, as he tells us that it has, what be- 

 comes of these concomitant properties? 

 Why may not an ultimate particle assert 

 that, while it cannot doubt the reality of 

 the number, space, motion and time of 

 which it is conscious, belief in these proper- 

 ties, as distinct from the judgment of par- 

 ticles, ' reifies a void ' and carries us into the 

 realm of ' ghosts,' since the essence of these 

 properties is to be perceived or known, in- 



