40 
C. L. Herrick 
But we turn first to the examination of the more recent results 
of this speculation, in the course of which we shall not hesitate to 
avail ourselves largely of the authoritative review of this field 
by Prof. W. M. Hicks, President of the Section of Mathematics at 
the meeting of the British Association in 1895.2^ Dr.* Hicks 
claims that the end of scientific investigation is the discovery of 
laws and that 
science will have reached its highest goal when it shall have reduced ulti- 
mate laws to one or two, the necessity for which lies outside the sphere 
of our cognition. These ultimate laws — in the domain of physical 
science, at least — will be the dynamic laws of the relations of matter to 
number, space and time. The ultimate data will be number, matter, 
space and time themselves. 
It would be easy to criticise this statement from a philosophical 
point of view. Probably the writer, if he had been using strict 
logical terminology, would have said, quantity, substance and 
relation.’’ That the connotation of the terms is that suggested 
appears from what immediately follows : 
When these relations shall be known, all physical phenomena will be 
a branch of pure mathematics. We shall have done away with the neces- 
sity for the conception of potential energy and — if it should 
be found that all phenomena are manifestations of motion in one con- 
tinuous medium — the idea of force will be banished also, and the study 
of dynamics will be replaced by the study of the equation of continuity. 
The critical reader will substitute activity” for motion” in 
the above passage, for it is inevitable, logically speaking, that the 
concepts of motion and force should disappear together. Such a 
statement from such a source should be convincing of the facts 
that, first, physical science will not remain satisfied short of a sin- 
gle metaphysical postulate back of phenomena, and, seconti, that 
the sole criterion for judging of the claim for recognition of such a 
postulate must be its congruousness with physical phenomena. 
The history of physical speculation shows that the attempts 
along this line have generally shattered on the predicates of 
materiality and divisibility. Atomic theories date from the 
dawn of thought. No one needs to be told that the whole fabric 
of modern physics and chemistry is based on the atomic theory 
Those interested will find the text of the address in Nature, September 12, 
1895 . 
