Reality of Force. 389 
premises. It may be thus overthrown, unless I am mistaken, 
in more ways than one. 
First, we may proceed by attacking Prop. 1. That conser- 
vation cannot be the ordinary ground for believing in the ob- 
jectivity of matter is simply proved by the fact that the mass 
of mankind have always believed (and, according to Prof. 
Tait, believed rightly) that matter exists, without having any 
idea what conservation of matter means: nay, more, while 
believing that matter is not conserved. And if it be said that 
it is not a question of what is, but what ought to be, the evi- 
dence for our belief, this does not affect my denial. We 
believe matter has an objective existence, not because it is 
conserved, but because it persists: in other words, because it 
has effects upon us which are regular, constant, can be re- 
experienced at will, and have all the other characteristics of an 
independent object. This proves to us that matter exists now; 
but it does not even begin to prove that it has always existed, 
and will always exist. I have not the slightest difficulty in 
conceiving that the universe may be annihilated to-morrow, 
though I am sure it exists to-day; even as Prospero did not 
mean to deny the reality of cloud-capped towers and gor- 
geous palaces, while asserting that they would one day become 
as the baseless fabric of a vision. 
Secondly, we may challenge Prop. 3. We have only to 
put it in a general form to see its weakness. It would then 
run thus: — "We believe a subject of thought X to have a cha- 
racteristic A chiefly because it has another characteristic B. 
There is another subject Y which also has the characteristic 
B : therefore it also, and independently, has the characteristic 
A." It is clear that this does not hold unless we assume the cha- 
racteristic B to be always and necessarily implied by A. But 
obviously this need not be the case. Thus, I may believe 
Camoens to be a great poet, chiefly because a great many 
people have considered him as such; but a great many people 
have considered Mr. Tupper a great poet, and yet I am not 
logically bound to accept their verdict. But apart from this, 
there is another flaw in the proposition; for the subject Y, 
though really having the characteristic A, may be simply 
another form, or a function of subject X; or, again, both may 
be functions of a third subject Z, which has the same characte- 
ristic. In either case Y is not a separate independent pos- 
sessor of B. The latter supposition really holds in the case 
of Energy, as will be seen hereafter. 
Thirdly, we have a still more important and obvioa.3 fallacy 
in Proposition 5, which is really the key of the whole. It 
needs only to be stated in order to become evident. It is the 
