Maeoh 13, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



407 



years in studying the worlds of the philosophers, 

 and as one willing to pocket his pride for the 

 sake of extending his knowledge, I feel impelled 

 to confess that there are many things in Major 

 Powell's paper which are not clear to me. The 

 fault is doubtless mine, since the paper is an 

 exposition of 'the true and simple,' loved by 

 the spirit of sanity extant among mankind ' in 

 the grand aggregate ' (p. 269). I can touch 

 upon but one or two of the points which per- 

 plex me. 



Those of us who busy ourselves with the 

 history of philosophy are accustomed to believe 

 that there are philosophers of many kinds, 

 some of whom believe in ' substratum ' et id 

 omne genus, and some of whom hold such things 

 in derision. Had not the author set himself 

 over against philosophers in general as the 

 champion of sanity, I should have been inclined 

 to class him among them and describe him as 

 a Positivist of a somewhat naive sort. Did 

 not Comte confine human knowledge within 

 the limits of the phenomenal? Did he not 

 reduce cause and efl'ect to antecedent and con- 

 sequent? Was he not the avowed enemy of 

 all ' reification ?' Did not Berkeley and Hume 

 and Mill handle without gloves the notion of 

 ' substratum ' here attributed to philosophers 

 generally? One seems to be listening to an 

 old, old story ; and yet there must be some 

 mistake, for all these men are everywhere al- 

 lowed to pass unchallenged as philosophers, 

 and so must have been addicted to something 

 stronger than 'the pure water of truth.' As 

 to the classification of Hegel with Chuar and 

 Spencer, those who think they understand 

 Hegel (and there are such) stoutly maintain 

 that he did not believe in 'substratum,' and 

 that it was in throwing away the remnant of it 

 left by Kant that he has earned the gratitude 

 of posterity. It is, of course, possible that 

 Major Powell has made a more careful study 

 of his works than they, and has discovered a 

 real similarity between his doctrine and that 

 of Spencer. 



The passages which dwell upon the constitu- 

 tion of matter occasion me no less perplexity. 

 ' ' All matter has four factors or constituents, 

 number, extension, motion and duration, and 

 some matter at least has a fifth factor, namely 



judgment " (p. 265). To one not habituated to 

 ' the true and simple,' this seems at first glance 

 ' reification ' of the worst sort. 



These ' entities ' (I use the word for want of 

 ai better) are made factors or constituents of 

 matter. The first four, of which alone I wish 

 to speak just now, are not commonly regarded 

 as of such a nature that when put together they 

 can make a thing. The Pythagoreans have 

 been criticised for ' reifying ' number in making 

 it the principle of all things. Descartes has 

 been criticised for treating extension in much 

 the same way. Major Powell goes further and 

 'reifies' — what other word can one use? — motion 

 and duration. Why he left out impenetrability 

 it is hard to say, but that may be explicable as 

 an oversight, for the article bears the marks of 

 having been hastily written. Why he chose 

 motion and duration, I cannot conceive. Can 

 we think of these as constituents of matter ? — as 

 constituents of the ultimate chemical particle 

 to which he refers (pp. 265 and 270)? Some of 

 the philosophers who object to the reification of 

 things define motion as the change of spatial 

 relations between material objects. If such be 

 motion, it is difficult to think of motion as a 

 constituent of an atom. If motion be some- 

 thing else, it would be interesting to have it 

 defined. Is all its motion present to an atom 

 at a single instant as all its extension is ? Or 

 can an atom at a single instant be said to have 

 motion at all ? I almost slipped into saying 

 'be in motion at all,' but such an expression 

 must be abandoned ; the atom's motion must 

 be, so to speak, in it. Those who are not 

 ashamed to read the works of the philosophers 

 will remember that this difficulty about having 

 motion at a single instant came to the surface 

 something more than two thousand years ago. 

 And if the motion in question is merely a factor 

 of the atom, a constituent, is it not fair to sup- 

 pose that an atom may have motion without 

 changing its place at all? What have external 

 relations to do with the existence of the consti- 

 tuents of this particular atom ? 



As to duration. Here the difficulty is as great. 

 Can an atom have its duration all at once? 

 Must it not take it bit by bit as it comes to it ? 

 Then the duration which helps to constitute the 

 atom must at each instant be different from that 



