i8g4 LETTERS 405 



To Mr. G- 



HodesleA, Oct. 31, 1894. 



Dear Mr. S " Liver,'' " lumbago/' and other small ills 



the flesh is heir to, have been making me very lazy lately, espe- 

 cially about letter-writing. 



You have got into the depths where the comprehensible ends 

 in the incomprehensible — where the symbols which may be used 

 with confidence so far begin to get shaky. 



It does not seem to me absolutely necessary that matter 

 should be composed of solid particles. The " atoms " may be 

 persistent whirlpools of a continuous " substance " — which sub- 

 stance, if at rest, could not affect us (all sensory impression 

 being dependent on motion) and consequently would for us = o. 

 The evolution of matter would be the getting under weigh of 

 this " nothing for us " until it became the " something for us," 

 the different motions of which give us the mental states we call 

 the qualities of things. 



But it needs a very steady head to walk safely among these 

 abysses of thought, and the only use of letting the mind range 

 among them is as a corrective to the hasty dogmatism of the 

 so-called materialists, who talk just as glibly of that of which 

 they know nothing as the most bigoted of the orthodox. 



Here also stand two letters to Lord Farrer, one before, 

 the other after, his address at the Statistical Society on the 

 Relations between Morals, Economics and Statistics, which 

 touch on several philosophical and social questions, always, 

 to his mind, intimately connected, and wherein wrong 

 modes of thought indubitably lead to wrong modes of ac- 

 tion. Noteworthy is a defence of the fundamental method 

 of Political Economy, however much its limitations might 

 be forgotten by some of its exponents. The reference to 

 the Church agitation to introduce dogmatic teaching into 

 the elementary schools has also a lasting interest. 



HodesleA, Nov. 6, 1894. 

 My dear Farrer — Whenever you get over the optimism of 

 your youthful constitution (I wish I were endowed with that 

 blessing) you will see that the Gospels and I are right about the 



* See p. 387. 



