266 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



ness is founded upon number, and men 

 have discovered that what is true of a body 

 is true of any other body of like kind, under 

 the axiom that whatever is true of anything 

 is true of its identity in so far only as it is 

 a constant property or an absolute, and not 

 in so far as it is a variable or relative. 

 These are all simple, self-evident proposi- 

 tions, but in the compounding and recom- 

 pounding of matter it is not always possible 

 to disentangle the constants from the vari- 

 ables. Men lost in the meaning of words, 

 forever wandering in linguistic jungles, have 

 engaged in discussions about essences and 

 have at last reified the word as something 

 which is not number associated with exten- 

 sion, motion and duration, but as some oc- 

 cult existence unknown and unknowable, 

 which gives to bodies their likeness or un- 

 likeness. Having reached the conclusion 

 that matter is something more than its con- 

 stituents, with an occult, unknown and un- 

 knowable substrate, they take the next step 

 that the essence of class or likeness and un- 

 likeness exists not in the fundamental pro- 

 perties of body or the fundamental constit- 

 uents of matter, but in their substrate. 



All known things are classified either 

 properly or improperly. The characters 

 upon which they are classed are thus in- 

 numerable. These characters which con- 

 stitute class are all the bodies embraced in 

 the class and all the properties embraced in 

 all the bodies of the class. The term es- 

 sence, then, used in this sense, means all of 

 these things. Therefore it is a general name 

 for everything in the universe, but obtain- 

 ing its particular meaning in any case by the 

 context. What is the meaning of the word 

 this f It may be applied to any constituent 

 of matter, to matter itself, to any body or to 

 any property, relation or quality in the ma- 

 terial world, and to any idea in the mental 

 world, and its meaning is derived from the 

 context; it has no definite meaning in itself. 

 Essence, as a word used by philosophers, is a 



pronoun of like character without specific 

 meaning, and attains its specific meaning 

 only by the context; it has one meaning at 

 one time, and another at another, and thus 

 it seems to be illusive. As the substrate of 

 matter, a reified nothing, is entertained in 

 the minds of some as an entitj'^, so some 

 thinkers make essence a property of this 

 substrate — a nonenity of a nonenity. Chuar, 

 Hegel and Spencer reason in this manner. 

 Essence as connoting the essential charac- 

 ters of a class is a word the meaning of 

 which scientific men clearly understand; it 

 is never ambiguous, although naturalists 

 may sometimes disagree about the essen- 

 tiality of a particular character, but the es- 

 sence of which the philosopher thinks is- 

 nonexistent, the opinions of the three wise 

 men to the contrary notwithstanding. 



SPACE. 



The word space is the pronoun of all ex- 

 tensions, figures and structures of exten- 

 sions in the multitudinous bodies of the 

 world. There are many extensions, and 

 every known body is a constituent of some 

 other body, and this synthesis may be con- 

 tinued until the mind is lost in immensity. 

 The space occupied by a body is its exten- 

 sion in structure and figure. This desk be- 

 fore me has extension, or we say that it oc- 

 cupies space; the space which it occupies is 

 its extension, from which it excludes other 

 bodies. Eemove the furniture from the 

 room, it is said to be empty, yet it is full of 

 air; remove the air from the room, yet it is 

 full of ether; remove the ether, may be, we 

 know not, all is removed ; then the wall en- 

 closes void — nothing — but the walls of the 

 room yet have extension, and we can meas- 

 ure this by measuring the walls, but void 

 cannot be measured; there is nothing to be 

 measured. Thus it is that space is the pro- 

 noun of all dimensions of all bodies, sever- 

 ally and conjointly, and as they are vari- 

 able, space seems to be illusive, and it comes- 



