STALL&S " CONCEPTS OF MODERN PHYSICS'' 233 



Now the magician Mind does his work. He takes hold of these sym- 

 boHc sounds and interprets them into ideas in thought, and the same thoughts 

 with the same feelings as they started. Here we are able to take hold of the im- 

 mediate state of objective things by becoming able magically to transmute the 

 symbols into terms of the real. From set to set of totally different symbols it 

 traveled to be at last correctly interpreted. Shall we ever be able to do with 

 our eyes resting on a human brain what we now can do with our ears turned to 

 the human lips ? It does not look probable that such a consummation can be ever 

 reached. Yet v.'ho dare say " never " ? 



Brain and vibrations, lips and vibrations are all symbols. Our bodies are 

 masses of symbolic relations. All of animate and inanimate(?) nature is the same. 

 We discover a common symbol in them all. Everywhere our mediate percep- 

 tion gives us matter and motion in time and space A few isolated specks called 

 human brains have only just begun to give us light of what this common symbol 

 means. Sensation looks as if there was a possibility that it gave as its objective 

 symbol inertia, and modes of sensation and thought look as if they gave as theirs, 

 modes of motion. Motion and mass are both mere sense illusions, if this is true, 

 and mind only constitutes the all. Matter and mind cannot even be two sides of 

 a common unity as many persons are pleased to view it. '' Death is swallowed 

 up of life." Matter is a mere set of objective relations that are absolutely noth- 

 ing in themselves only as they stand for thoughts and feelings. What a task is 

 before the psychology of the future ? To it is bequeathed the work of reading 

 the subjective meaning, first, of brain movements and finally those of all being. 

 If monism proves false then it surely looks dark for the discovery of what it is 

 whose relations as symbols we know. If we cannot get into things through our 

 symbols we are helpless. From the symbolic without we can gain no steps be- 

 yond inertia and motion. The noumena must remain an eternal unknowable. 



The Judge's special illustrations of his third metaphysical error of science are 

 first the atomic theory and second gravity. The order of experience with matter 

 in a growing child is first the solid and last the gas. His concepts therefore de- 

 velop in this order. The true order according to our author is the reverse of this. 

 " All evolution proceeds from the relatively Indeterminate to the relatively De- 

 terminate, and from the comparatively Simple to the comparatively Complex." 

 (p. 172 ) The gas he claims is not only comparatively indeterminate but is also 

 the most simple form of matter. He concludes from this, and probably correctly, 

 that we should seek to explain the solid by the gas, rather than the gas by the 

 solid. If we admit molecules at all they should be soft, expansive and contractile 

 ones rather than hard, inelastic ones. When, however, from this ground he rea- 

 sons that gravity is action at a distance, his positions are utterly untenable. 

 Gravity so far from being indeterminate is the most determinate form of energy 

 we know and instead of being comparatively simple is so complex that theory 

 after theory has failed in attempting to explain it. His attempt to clear himself 

 from Mill's objections to action at a distance clearly shows the comi^lexity of the 

 problem, even on that assumption. He says: "This inability results from the 



