48 EXPRESSION. 
and a similar difficulty may be felt at the applica- 
tion of such words as “ advance,’ not to movement 
in space but to conditions of other than physical 
description. 
But very little consideration will make such 
difficulties disappear. They do not exist in re- 
lation to many of the words enumerated above ; 
for magnitude, resistance, and motion, three of 
the heads used in the enumeration, are obviously 
ideas not confined to objects in space, though 
primarily the words refer to physical objects, ac- 
cording to the general rule of words with a physical 
and metaphysical application. As regards words 
expressing distance, it will be noted that “near” or 
“far” remains the same idea, whether the degree of 
deviation from identity contemplated refers to time, 
space, or constitution ; while attraction or repulsion 
is the mere tendency to passage from one degree 
of nearness to another, whether in space or in 
constitution. 
In such expressions as “ advance’ 
and “ retro- 
gression” we have still to deal with distance; only 
in this instance it is distance from a goal more or 
less distinctly imagined as an object of desire, 
whether it be a spot on earth to which we bend 
our steps, or some intellectual, moral or artistic 
perfection, or whatever else; while the character 
