394 Peeling and Energy, [July, 
in time, in which feeling may transpire and alternate with 
energising affections. 
I am aware that a physicist might reply that the reason 
why nervous vibration — like all other vibration — involves 
the element of time is that space has to be travelled over, 
and that all the period between the receiving of energy by 
the first molecule and imparting it to the second molecule 
is occupied by traversing the distance between them, and 
that if such distance did not exist the motion of the first 
and last molecules would be simultaneous, and the condition 
of all the molecules would be a dynamical one. Therefore, 
that the condition of a molecule separated by distance from 
a second molecule is simply a dynamical one from the instant 
of its first receiving energy. Doubtless, I reply, if we obli- 
terate space we obliterate time, and if we in theory blot 
these out there will surely not be much power left in us to 
imagine either feeling or energy ! But we cannot conceive of 
energy without supposing something upon which energy is 
to be exerted. This implies plurality of objedts or parts of 
matter, and this again implies parts of space and time. 
That the time of receiving energy by a molecule is not iden- 
tical with that of its imparting the received energy is proved 
even by the law of inertia, which will admit of no beginning 
of movement till the requisite energy is all received. Now 
there must be a period, in the case of every molecule about 
to take part in vibration, during which it is in the condition 
of receiving its quota of energy necessary to overcome its 
inertia prior to its beginning to move , or impart the energy 
being communicated to it. This is the necessary locus in 
time where feeling may come in as incipient energy, or an 
affection of matter resembling energy, yet differing from it 
by its characteristic feature, passivity. 
Thus far the hypothesis of alternation between mental 
and physical, or feeling and energising, affedtions of matter 
has its difficulties explained away. 
In conclusion, it may be remarked that while the hypo- 
thesis links feeling with energy in a causal relation, yet no 
harm will accrue to physical science by its acceptance ; for 
the dynamical links, though deemed alternating with links 
of feeling, need not to be reckoned in any problems of physics 
as affedted by the mental states intervening, for the mental 
are the results of the physical, and the physical of the 
mental, in such a manner that no energy is lost, and all is 
exactly as if the dynamical sequences were uninterrupted. 
Again, no discrepancy need arise in psychological science by 
the intervention of dynamical with mental affedtions, for the 
