230 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



jective reality and as it is one of our most extensive concepts all material being 

 has come therefrom. The other side, reasoning with Faraday asks: " What do 

 we know of the atom apart from its forces ?" Since we know nothing of matter 

 save through force, they hold forth the view that force is an entity and from it every- 

 thing has come. Our author tells us that "force is nothing without mass and 

 mass is nothing without force." (p. i6i.) He denies that either is a fact in itself 

 and declares both " conceptual integrants of matter." " In both cases products 

 of abstraction are mistaken for kinds of reality." To clearly understand the exact 

 nature of this controversy requires careful thought. Judge Stallo's view of this 

 warfare between the great thinkers of the world is one which I fear can never be- 

 come universal. Although it is certain that one or both sides may be wrong, yet 

 it is hard to believe that the object sought after by each and which one side im- 

 agines it has found in force and the other in mass is totally delusive. That bodies 

 exist, as such, in virtue of their relations is quite conceivable, but to say that they 

 exist '^solely in virtue of their relations " sounds to me like utter nonsense. That 

 " things are known to us solely through their properties; and the properties of 

 things are nothing else than their interactions and mutual relations " as affecting 

 our consciousness, is quite true. 



To tell us that " the annihilation of all bodies but one would not only destroy 

 the motion of this one, as Prof. Neumann sees, but would also destroy its very 

 exis fence and bring it to naught,'^ taxes our credulity somewhat. If we believe in 

 the impact theory of attraction we might see in the annihilation of all bodies, 

 save one the perfect solution of that one, but by accepting the counter-theory 

 even this difficulty would disappear. Here is the basis of his charge of the 

 fourth metaphysical assumption. Men of science entertain the view that behind 

 such relations as we are cognizant of lies a something so related. What meaning 

 can we attach to the fact of relation unless there is something related ? If no 

 one thing exist without the total that one must be the total. On what ground 

 can we claim that a finite total, of any size, is impossible ? 



Prof. Wm. James, of Cambridge, Mass., in "Mind," April number, 1882, p. 

 196, in an article entitled "On some Hegelisms," presents the position of our 

 author. He is showing the difference between Hume's Empiricism and Hegel's 

 " Ontological Reveries," (as the judge calls them,) on the principle of totality. 

 "But Hegelism dogmatically denies all this to be possible. In the first place it 

 says there are no intrinsic natures that may change ; in the second it says there 

 are no adventitious relations. When the relations of what we call a thing are 

 told, wo cnput mortuum of intrinsicality, no 'nature' is left. The relations soak 

 vp all there is of the thing; the ' items' of the world are but foci of relation with 

 o\htx foci of relation And all the relations are necessary. The unity of the world 

 has nothing to do with any 'matrix.' The matrix and the items, each with all, 

 make a unity, simply because each in truth is all the rest." Does not this sound 

 very like our author's position? Is it quite certain that the present work is en- 

 tirely free from the effects of the spell which held him in 1 848 when ' ' The Phil- 

 osophy of Nature " was published? 



