Dynamical Ideas in Chemistry. 401 



Colour and Image are inherent, is not the Object or thing seen. 

 That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an Image 

 or Colour. That the said Image or Colour is but an apparition 

 unto us of the motion, agitation or alteration which the Object 

 worketh in the Brain, or spirits, or some internal substance of 

 the head. That as in Vision, so also in conceptions that arise 

 from the other Senses, the subject of their inherence is not the 

 Object, but the Sentient." (p. 9.) 



Hobbes also says that the reflex stroke from the brain to the 

 impressing object constitutes our sense of colour, form, sound, 

 etc. What is really outside is " motions, by which these seem- 

 ings are caused." (p. 18.) 



" Conceptions and apparitions are nothing really, but motion 

 in some internal substance of the head." (p. 69.) 



" All evidence is conception .... and all conception is imagi- 

 nation, and proceedeth from Sense." (p. 135.) 



Hobbes does not seem to have anywhere definitely stated the 

 final conclusion deducible from the above propositions. But 

 they involve a sorites; the beginning of which is the mental act, 

 the end of which is motion : motion is therefore exclusively our 

 being. The argument may be exhibited as follows. I only 

 know of events by sensations, which can only be represented as 

 motion ; the organs or parts of my body whereby I know these 

 are themselves events, both to me and other intelligences. All 

 knowledge of events is therefore knowledge of motion. In 

 " events " are included the emotions, will, and intellect of other 

 persons ; consequently my own. A moving body is merely di- 

 rected or relative motion. This theory must apply at least to 

 all conscious knowledge*. 



The last philosopher who can be said to have advocated the 

 idea of pure motion was Hegel. In his dialectical method, 

 which always advances "from notion to notion through nega- 

 tion " — in his doctrine of being, as always (pendulum-like) va- 

 nishing into nothing and back again — in these and other prin- 

 cipal features of HegePs system, we observe, as its author 

 acknowledged, the restoration of the Herakleitic principle. It 

 would be a mistake, however, to suppose that Hegel, in endea- 

 vouring to trace out with much minuteness the universal preva- 

 lence of his dialectic, agrees at all points with his Grecian pre- 

 decessor ; but, on the whole, his fundamental idea is most con- 

 vincingly the same. 



The philosophic aspect of the idea of pure motion, as portrayed 

 in the preceding paragraphs, indicates the prevalence of that 

 ideal influence from very early historic times until now; and 



* Further expositions of Hobbes's view will be found in his work 'The 

 Leviathan ' (1651), pp. 3, 352, 369, 374, 375. 



Phil. Mag. S. 4. Vol. 46. No. 307. Nov. 1873. 2 E 



