170 W. A. Norton on Molecular Physics, 
am quite ready to meet him: but I wish to enter here, at the — 
outset, a demurrer against the virtual claim of the superiority 
of his own a priori method of establishing his fundamental — 
principles. Such a claim is implied in the intimation that “no 
one has up to this day established the truth of such propos 
tions ;’”—as will be best appreciated by those who have read Pr 
Bayma’s book. Having proved, as he conceives, his propos 
tions, and clinched each one of them with a Q. E. D., he ins 
that obvious intimations of Nature are to be discarded because 
the stamp of infallibility cannot be put upon them at once, 
before the test of availability in the explanation of phenomena 
has been applied. It was evident from the tenor of my expo 
sition of the subject that the “established truths” referred 0 
were merely regarded as having been virtually established, ot 
rendered highly probable, by the inductions of science. The 
claim implied in Prof. Bayma’s criticism, that they requires 
higher confirmation, in fact a demonstration of their truth, 3 
not to be admitted, 
e asks : 
On what evidence are we to grant that matter exists in thre — 
forms essentially different from each other | 
A sufficient answer to the critic himself, is that poral 
systematic course of deduction from his leading principles, 
his assumptions of the essential nature of matter, he act! os 
different forms of matte: 
But to reply to others who may be disposed 6. ve . 2 
ponderable matter ; or of something which a a 
chanical attributes of matter. That an ether exists 2 a 
and i . ly regaml 
As 
¢ ether, the evidence of its existence is that the sit : 
