38 
SPENCER’S 
FIRST PRINCIPLES. 
Feb., 1889. 
<* 
5 ? 
to enable us to explain all phenomena as cases of mechanical 
action and mechanical motion—to explain all the forms of 
energy as kinetic and potential. 
As yet, our hypotheses are unverified, and, for the most 
part, they appear likely to remain so, for it is difficult to con¬ 
ceive of any test of their truth. And until they are verified 
we must ever bear in mind that new hypotheses may at any 
time be devised, which may explain phenomena even better 
than the old ones. So, it behoves us to be cautious in com¬ 
mitting ourselves to doctrines as to the indestructibility of 
matter or the continuity of motion, which are based on 
hvpotheses as to the structure of matter and the nature of 
energy. We need have no fear that without these doctrines 
science would be impossible. If matter is destructible and 
motion ceases, there is only the more work for the physicist 
to do in determining the conditions of annihilation. He can 
still find resemblances, can still explain the complex unknown 
as made up of the simpler known. And when his senses fail 
to guide him, he can still invent hypotheses whereby his 
imagination may come to their aid. His science will only 
stop when he comes to the ultimate ideas, the mexplicables, 
in terms of which all phenomena are to be described—inex- 
plicables, in that they can be no further resolved, in that they 
are utterly unlike each other but not unknowable, for we 
know them one from the other, and we know them as the 
threads with which is woven all that we have yet discovered 
of the pattern of the universe. 
But this is not an exposition of Mr. Spencer’s chapters. 
I seem to have travelled so far on a diverging path, that I 
have almost lost sight of the goal to which he would lead. 
Let me attempt, in conclusion, to state in a few words where 
I think we diverged. 
While Mr. Spencer holds that common experience of 
matter and motion, if rightly interpreted, leads to the belief 
in the indestructibility of the one and the continuity of the 
other, I hold that common experience only raises a 
presumption, the belief is only rightly and firmly founded on 
the results of careful and exact quantitative experiments. 
While he holds that they are necessary truths, I still think it 
conceivable that they are false. While he regards them both 
as leading to the persistence of force as the ultimate postulate, 
I very much doubt whether any relation between definite 
ideas is a postulate. The postulates which I have used are 
both of them conditional propositions. If so and so, then so 
and so. In fact, I suspect that the mind is provided only 
with machinery ready to arrange the results put into it by the 
senses, and that it does not contain any results ready made. 
