408 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. hi. No. 63. 



which plays its part as factor at the next. A 

 further difficulty rises with the thought that, 

 pei'haps, after all, duration cannot have its being 

 in a single instant, but needs at least two to be 

 duration. The atom at any instant is just what 

 it is, and is made what it is at that Instant by 

 the presence of all its four constituents. If 

 duration needs more than one instant to be 

 duration, how can it be present at a single in- 

 stant? That duration really implies more 

 than a single instant seems clear from the fact 

 that "in the material world we have no knowl- 

 edge of something which has not duration 



as persistence or duration with persistence and 

 change" (pp. 270-271). Surely a thing cannot 

 persist all in an instant any more than a bird 

 can flock all by itself, or one man look alike. 

 There are philosophers ' lost in the meaning of 

 words, forever wandering in linguistic jungles ' 

 (p. 266), who have maintained that duration is 

 nothing but a name for a certain kind of order 

 in things, the order we call successive. Such 

 philosophers, ' in the revelry developed by the 

 hashish of mystery,' protest against the reifi- 

 cation of duration, and even so far forget them- 

 selves as to denounce the tendency to reify it 

 as a lapse into medisevalism. Making it a con- 

 stituent of matter they regard as reifying it, 

 and they are capable of interrupting a man at 

 a spectroscope with the diabolical suggestion 

 that they would as lief reify the relations 

 'greater' or 'smaller,' as the philosopher did 

 when philosophy was in its infancy. 



Regarding the fifth factor, which serves as a 

 constituent of some matter — 'judgment' — 

 Major Powell's expositions do not appear to me 

 luminous. Many views have been held as to 

 the relations of mind and body, and even phil- 

 osophers have not been at one as to the par- 

 ticular sort of mj'stery in which they would de- 

 cide to revel in discussing this problem. Most 

 of them now speak with some hesitation upon 

 the subject, and confess that the problem is 

 difficult of solution. To Major Powell it is as 

 clear as noon-day. There is matter which con- 

 sists of number, extension, motion and dura- 

 tion, and there is other matter which consists 

 of these with the addition of judgment. But 

 bodies consist of ultimate particles. In describ- 

 ing in what these ultimate particles resemble 



each other and in what they differ, the author 

 seems to have overlooked this fifth factor, which 

 is to differentiate some particles from others 

 (p. 265). This must be an oversight, for are 

 not the two classes clearly distinguished as 

 different in the number of their constituents? 

 And are we not informed that the constituents 

 ' are never dissociated, but constitute matter ' 

 (p. 265). The chemist has then to reckon with 

 chemical particles which have judgment and 

 those which have not. Presumably more or 

 less of the former are found' in the human brain, 

 and the chemist of our day should not overlook 

 them. We have here a new kind of atom, more 

 complex in its nature than other atoms, and 

 gifted with a constituent of a very remarkable 

 sort. Since the five constituents are never 

 dissociated, we may expect to find such atoms 

 also in other situations, where the common 

 man never thinks of looking for judgment. 

 And this fifth constituent has the peculiar 

 faculty of developing ' into cognition of the 

 constituents of matter, of their relations, and 

 also a cognition of cognitions and the relations 

 of cognitions ' (p. 268). Notwithstanding this 

 surprising development, it presumably still re- 

 mains a constituent of the atom. Since brains 

 consist of nothing but atoms, and nonentities 

 must not be reified, this factor, to be real at 

 all, must be a constituent of individual atoms. 

 And since the atoms in brains keep coming and 

 going, the careful observer may reasonably 

 hope to find such atoms everywhere, with their 

 fifth factors developed into a ' cognition of con- 

 nitions and the relations of cognitions.' It is 

 gratifying to one who finds all this obscure to 

 be told that "science does not lead to mystery 

 but to knowledge, and the mind rests satisfied 

 with the knowledge thus gained when the 

 analysis is complete." We are quite willing to . 

 take the author's word for the fact that it is 

 here complete, but we must confess with humil- 

 ity that we walk by faith. 



Having nerved ourselves to the effort of ac- 

 cepting the two kinds of matter as a refuge 

 from mystery, we feel a mild wonder at certain 

 sentences which seem to indicate that there are, 

 after all, two worlds and not one. " Concepts 

 of number, extension, motion, duration and 

 judgment are," we are informed, " developed by 



