NEW THEORY OF MATTER 187 



in action at inappreciable distances, as exemplified in atmospheric electric strain, cohesion, adhesion, and what- 

 ever more direct and intimate relations are possible. The existence of the finer ether does not destroy the gross 

 matter, neither does the most direct conceivable action destroy action at a distance. The sense organs compel 

 us to believe in the grosser matter, and chemical analysis, and the microscope, with its multiple powers and 

 improved definition, gradually introduce us to finer and finer matter. The limits set to the eye, the telescope, 

 microscope, spectroscope, and the most refined chemical analysis forbid us to deal with ultimate matter, 

 but the experience gained from the grosser matter enables us to reahse and appreciate what can be neither seen 

 nor felt. 



As already indicated, it was Faraday who first took exception to the doctrine of action at a distance, and 

 on his experiments and views the electric theory of matter was ultimately founded. He, however, failed to account 

 for or explain away the great law of gravitation discovered by Newton. 



As pointed out by Mr. A. J. Balfour, " No scientific education is likely to make us, in our unreflective moments, 

 regard the solid earth on which we stand, or the organised bodies with which our terrestrial fate is so intimately 

 bound up, as consisting wholly of electric monads very sparsely scattered through the spaces which these fragments 

 of matter are, by a violent metaphor, described as ' occupying.' The electric theory which we have been considering 

 carries us into a new region altogether. It does not confine itself to accounting for the secondary qualities of matter 

 by the primary ones, or the behaviour of matter in bulk by the behaviour of matter in atoms ; it analyses matter, 

 whether molar or molecular, into something which is not matter at all. The atom is now no more than the rela- 

 tively vast theatre of operations in which minute monads perform their orderly evolutions ; while the monads them- 

 selves are not regarded as units of matter, but as units of electricity ; so that matter is not merely explained, but 

 is explained away." 



The great difficulty in accepting the new theory of matter so well stated by Mr. Balfour consists in its 

 transcendentalism and its tendency to disparage the sense organs as reliable instruments for obtaining accurate 

 knowledge, within Umits, of things outside of ourselves. 



The trend of philosophy and recent physical speculations, in Mr. Balfour's opinion, is to show that inasmuch 

 as the sense organs, even when artificially aided, cannot adequately deal with matter in its ultimate electrical con- 

 dition, and inasmuch as they were constructed in a more or less perfect form ages before physical science existed, and 

 even before knowledge and abstract reasoning were desiderata, therefore the senses are not safe guides for acquiring 

 useful and other knowledge. This, it appears to me, is a distorted view of things, and amounts practically to a 

 redudio ad ahsurdum. 



Mr. Balfour virtually adopts the new theory of matter, and, in doing so, throws doubt upon the utihty of the 

 sense organs as instruments for acquiring knowledge, especially exact and higher knowledge. In deahng with the 

 sense organs he calls to his aid the theory of " natural selection," than which, as I will show further on, there can 

 be no more unsafe guide. He says : " Sense-perceptions supply the premises from which we draw all our know- 

 ledge of the physical world. It is they which tell us that there is a physical world ; it is on their authority that 

 we learn its character. But in order of causation they are effects due (in part) to the constitution of oiu- organs 

 of sense. "What we see depends not merely on what there is to be seen, but on our eyes. What we hear depends 

 not merely on what there is to hear, but on our ears. Now, eyes and ears, and all the mechanism of perception, 

 have, as we know, been evolved in us and our brute progenitors by the slow operation of natural selection. And 

 what is true of sense-perception is of course also true of the intellectual powers which enable us to erect upon 

 the frail and narrow platform which sense-perception provides the proud fabric of the sciences. It is certain 

 that our powers of sense-perception and of calculation were fully developed ages before they were effectively 

 employed in searching out the secrets of physical reahty — for our discoveries in this field are the triumphs but 

 of yesterday. The bhnd forces of Natural Selection, which so admirably simulate design when they are providing 

 for a present need, possess no power of prevision, and could never, except by accident, have endowed mankind, 

 while in the making, with a physiological or mental outfit adapted to the higher physical investigations. So 

 far as natural science can tell us, every quaUty of sense or intellect which does not help us to fight, to eat, and 

 to bring up children, is but a by-product of the quahties which do. Our organs of sense-perception were not given 

 us for purposes of research ; nor was it to aid us in meting out the heavens or dividing the atom that our powers 

 of calculation and analysis were evolved from the rudimentary instincts of the animal. 



"It is presumably due to these circumstances that the behefs of all mankind about the material surroundings 

 in which it dwells are not only imperfect but fundamentally wrong. It may seem singular that down to, say, 

 five years ago, our race has without exception lived and died in a world of illusions, and that its illusions, or those 

 with which we are alone concerned, have not been about things remote or abstract, things transcendental or 

 divine but about what men see and handle, about those ' plain matters of fact ' among which common sense 



