Franxianp.—On the Doctrine of Mind-Stuff. 211 
Psychology is the only science which deals with them; and even that deals 
only with the most complex of them. Therefore the Doctrine of Mind-Stuff 
can in no way supersede the necessity of, still less can it exclude, these 
mechanical explanations of the universe. 
But although the principles of rational mechanics, and the hypotheses 
by which, in conjunction with the former, it is sought to explain the 
observed phenomena and structure of the material world, are in no way in 
conflict with our doctrine, we shall presently see that they may come to 
have a very important bearing on the determination of the particular form 
which that doctrine ought to assume. For the doctrine asserts that the 
possibilities of sensation which constitute a material object, correspond to, 
and depend for their existence on, some reality outside us or “ eject” of 
which Mind-Stuff units are the elementary constituents. Hence every 
conception of mechanieal science must denote what would be called in 
mathematics some function of Mind-Stuff. Matter, defined as that which 
has mass or inertia, must be a function of Mind-Stuff. Motion, force, and 
energy, must be functions of Mind-Stuff. The interesting question then 
suggests itself: What functions, severally, are mass, momentum, energy, 
etc., of the noumenal reality which we have designated Mind-Stuff. This 
question has been touched upon in a profound passage of the late Professor 
Clifford's review of a work entitled ** The Unseen Universe.” Professor 
Clifford there indicates that the answer to the question, if it can be 
answered, must depend on the knowledge we can gain respecting Mind- 
Stuff itself—knowledge which can only be acquired within the domain of 
psychology. Our feelings, he points out, have certain relations of contiguity 
or nextness in space, exemplified by contiguous elements of a visual image, 
and certain relations of sequence in time, exemplified by all feelings what- 
ever. “ Out of these two relations the future theorist must build up the 
world as best he may. Two things may, perhaps, help him: there are 
several lines of mathematical thought which seem to indicate that distance 
and quantity may come to be expressed in terms of position, in the wide 
sense of an analysis situs, while the theory of the curvature of space hints 
at a possibility that matter and motion may be expressed in terms of ex- 
tension only.''* 
* I take this to mean, that if we admit as a mend — the properties of space 
may show a sensible divergence from the Euclidean , if we consider very small 
parts of it—we get at a way of defining matter in R of the space which it occupies. 
ultimate atom of matter (perhaps infinitesimal as compared with the chemical atom) 
would on that view be merely an infinitesimal erumple in space. All physical science 
would then be reduced to —— geometry, and space-elements would be the 
analogues of Mind-Stuff 
The form: nica Sa SALA TCR 
