62 
represent a body as acting where it is not, and in the absence 
of anything by which its action maybe transferred ; and what 
matters it whether this takes place on a large or a small 
scale ? ” Now, taking into account, what all must admit, 
that the action of gravity at a distance is an undoubted fact, 
notwithstanding that the mode of its operation is incon- 
ceivable by us, it appears that the creation and annihilation of 
matter may also be real facts, although we are unable to form 
a conception of the how. 
26. But not only the inconceivability of the manner in 
which a circumstance takes place, but the inconceivability of 
the circumstance itself, may be quite consistent with its possi- 
bility. For this we need go no further than the fact noticed a 
short time ago, that finite and infinite time are both alike 
inconceivable, and yet one or the other, if not both, must 
necessarily be a reality. 
27. Mr. Spencer’s third argument is founded on the con- 
tinuity of motion. “Like the indestructibility of matter,” 
he says, “ the continuity of motion, or, more strictly, of that 
something which has motion for one of its sensible forms, is a 
proposition on the truth of which depends the possibility of 
exact science” (p. 180). Then, after instancing the move- 
ments of the planets, whose velocity, though variable, owing 
to the ellipticity of then* orbits, preserves a constant mean 
value, as also the vibrations of the pendulum, which, “ with 
speed now increasing and now decreasing, alternates between 
extremes at which motion ceases,” he asks, <e What, then, 
do these cases show us in common ? That which vision 
familiarizes us with in motion, and that which has thus been 
made the dominant element in our conception of motion, is 
not the element of which we can allege continuity. If we 
regard motion simply as change of place, then the pendulum 
shows us both that the rate of this change may vary from 
instant to instant, and that, ceasing at intervals, it may be 
afresh initiated. But,” he adds, “ if what we may call the 
translation-element in motion is not continuous, what is con- 
tinuous ? If, watching like Galileo a swinging chandelier, we 
observe, not its isochronism, but the recurring reversal of its 
swing, we are impressed with the fact that though, at the end 
of each swing, the translation through space ceases, yet there 
is something which does not cease ; for the translation recom- 
mences in the opposite direction. . . . The truth forced on 
our attention by these facts and inferences is, that the trans- 
lation through space is not an existence ; and that hence the 
cessation of motion, considered simply as translation, is not 
the cessation of an existence, but is the cessation of a certain 
