214 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Thomson, which makes all the atoms of ordinary matter, and all the par- 

 ticles of which the ether is composed, to consist of a rotational motion in 

 an incompressible fiictionless fluid ? The stoppage of the vortex-motion 

 would be the obHteration of both atoms and ether — the annihilation of the 

 sensible universe. The perfect fluid at rest would be, on my view, a mere 

 nullity. No noumenal existence would correspond to it, and it would, in 

 fact, merely represent the potentiality of massiveness among feelings. 



Two other identifications will at once suggest themselves, and may be 

 relied on with greater confidence than any of the three preceding ones : 

 First, the causal relations among elements of feeling will have then- counter- 

 parts in the causal relations among motions of matter, i.e., they will have 

 theu' counterparts in the dynamical laws of the universe. And secondly, 

 the relations of synchroiaism among elements of feeling will have their 

 counterparts in the relations of synchronism among the motions of matter, 

 i.e., they -will have their counterparts in the space-relations of the universe. 

 Certain passages in Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Pyschology" seem to 

 mdicate that he entertains a similar belief. 



And now, one more thing follows. The nexus of causation which 

 obtains among the feeling-elements, or Mind-Stuff units, i.e., among the 

 elements of the noumenal world, must be at least as complex as the corre- 

 sponding nexus which obtains among the motions of matter, i.e., among the 

 elements of the phenomenal world ; arid it may be indefinitely more so. For 

 the phenomenal world depends for its existence on the noumenal world, and 

 is in fact only a particular aspect of the latter — that aspect, namely, which 

 the noumenal world presents to its own most complex strands, the percipient 

 beings that grow up in its bosom. Nor can the elements of the phenomenal 

 world derive any complexity from the interaction of the noumenal elements 

 which they represent with the complex structure of the precipients. For it 

 is the especial triumph of the mechanical theory of the universe to have 

 ehminated all these complexities, and referred the affections of the various 

 senses to the same sovirce. Thus the sensations of light and warmth we 

 receive from a fire, are both referred to the radiant energy of the ether 

 which intervenes between the fire and ourselves. Hence we may be certain 

 that the nexus of causation in the noumenal world is at least as complex as 

 the dynamical nexus of the phenomenal world. But it may be indefinitely 

 more so. There may be many causal relations in the noumenal world which 

 have no types in the phenomenal world, though we may be certain that every 

 dynamical relation in the phenomenal has its anti-type in the noumenal 

 world. The phenomenal world is a j^rojection, so to speak, of the noumenal 

 world on the plane of observation, and much complexity may be lost in the 

 process of projection. In the same way the space -relations of the pheno- 



