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mere state of tlie wheel at the time when it is in motion. Nor 
can yon speak of the circular form of the wheel, in virtue of 
which it moves in the manner it does, as a power (C attached 
in,” or ct gathered around ” it. Neither is any other attribute, 
quality, property, capability, or mode of being belonging to 
the true idea of that wheel, a power attached to it or gathered 
around it. The wheel, if it exist at all, must exist as some- 
thing, and so must have some mode of being, but this mere 
fashion of its existence is nothing, even in thought, apart from 
the thing of whose being it is the fashion. How then can the 
electric conduction or isolation of a substance, or that state of 
the substance which explains its isolation or its conduction be 
a “ power attached in or around ” that substance ? Such 
thought, as places the modes of being as powers attached to 
or gathered around a substance, might pass in poetry perhaps, 
but is utterly from home in severe thinking. Yet it is only by 
taking mere states of substances, and imagining that these 
mere modes of existence are the substances whose modes of 
existence they are, that Mr. Faraday metaphysically reaches his 
amazing conclusion and teaches that “ force is matter ! ” 
Force, as we have seen, and shall yet more fully see, is not 
even a mode of material existence, belonging as it does ex- 
clusively to mind, when considered in true science, and yet by 
this incredibly loose thinking it is made to seem matter itself ! 
He says that with the view he opposes “ a mass of matter con- 
sists of atoms and intervening space,” but with the view which 
he adopts, “ matter is everywhere present ! ” He constrains 
us to inquire what he means by “ where 33 The word in rela- 
tion to matter properly expresses the idea of Place. We can 
think of a place either as empty or full. An absolutely empty 
place is nothing. A place materially full is in itself equally 
nothing. If matter is everywhere present, it is infinitely 
extended. Matter is then the true infinite. This is, we should 
think, rather difficult of proof. If there is no empty space 
between its parts that is only that it is undivided if not 
indivisible — a vacuum is then impossible, which, we should 
think, is also rather incredible. It is certainly not an un- 
natural thought, that when a solid mass is moved to one side 
its Place is empty so far as this removal is concerned. An- 
other mass, one would think, is required to take that place, 
or that must be empty, — that is, what is called “ space ” must 
there intervene. Matter is certainly not necessarily every- 
where present. 
But Mr. Faraday's argument is directed chiefly against 
certain aspects of what is called the “ atomic 33 theory of 
matter, and against certain statements of this theory it may be 
