apart from specific experience, to regard the one as in any respect less probable than the other." 1

The idea that a body like the sun, which is ninety-two millions of miles distant from us, can act directly on us across this distance, assumed to be a vacuum, is absolutely inconceivable, since action involves motion, and the motion through this space must be either the motion of the body itself, or of some body to which it has been transferred. A mere crack in a glass extinguishes its sounding property; that is to say, the waves of molecular motion are no longer propagated because of this solution of continuity; and if between us and the sun there were any solution of material continuity, the waves of ether would not reach us from the molecular agitations of the sun; or-if we suppose them to pass across this gap-it would still be the actual presence of the wave which at each point exerted its pressure. Action at a distance, unless understood in the sense of action through unspecified intermediates, is both logically and physically absurd. Logically, since action involves reaction, and is only conceivable as the combination of forces; physically, since the attraction said to act across the distance is avowedly a function of the distance, which increases as the distance decreases; and this implies that the distance is an Agent. Now, if we assume the space between two bodies to be empty, we make this nothing an effective Agent, which offers resistance to pressure, and causes a decrease of attraction. I therefore ask, with Professor Clerk Maxwell: "If something is transmitted from one particle to another at a distance, what is its condition after it has left the one particle and before it has reached the other? If this something is the potential energy of the two particles, how are we to conceive this energy as existing in a point of space coinciding neither with the one particle nor the other? In fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy exists, ," otherwise there would be energy which was not the active state of matter, but an activity floating through the Nothing.

It should be observed, and the observation is suggestive in many directions, that some of the most eminent physicists have not only adopted the idea of action at a distance, but have constructed on it elaborate and effective theories of electrical action. Gauss, Weber, Riemann, Neumann, and others, have interpreted electro-magnetic actions on this assumption; and the success which has attended their efforts is another among the many examples of the truth we have previously enforced, that no amount of agreement between observed phenomena and an hypothesis is sufficient to prove the truth of the hypothesis. Contrasted with the labors of these mathematicians and physicists, we have the labors of Faraday, Thomson, Tait, Clerk Maxwell, and others, who start from the hypothesis of a material medium. Not only are they able to explain all the observed phenomena on this hypothesis, but they have the immense advantage of not invoking an agency which is without a warrant in experience. Where the mathematicians admitted only the abstraction pure Distance, and centres of force acting on each other across this Distance, Faraday and his followers have

1 Mill:

Examination of Sir W. Hamilton," p. 531.

Clerk Maxwell : Electricity and Magnetism," vol. II. p. 437.

admitted with the Distance its concrete Medium, and with the centres of force, radii or lines of force; where the one class sees the abstract power of action at a distance impressed upon the electric fluids, the other class sees the actions going on in the Medium, and these are the concrete phenomena. The superiority of the second point of view seems to me to consist in its speculative and its practical advantages. Although the two are mathematically equivalent, the second has the speculative superiority of conformity with Experience; and according to Professor Maxwell it has the further practical advantage of leading us to inquire into the nature of the action in each part of the medium.1

The conception of a Plenum is simply the unavoidable conclusion from the conception of Existence as continuous; and this continuity is itself the correlative of the impossibility of accepting the pure Nothing otherwise than as a generalization of our negative experiences. But if continuity of Existence is thus necessarily postulated, it does not interfere with the utmost variety in the modes of Existence; and with every variation in mode there is superficial discontinuity. When a feeling changes, it is because another feeling has replaced it. My hand passing over a surface has one mode of feeling until it reaches the boundary, and then a new mode arises to replace the former,- the feeling of solid resistance gives place to one of fluid or aërial resistance. The new mode is unlike the old, discontinuous with it; but it is nevertheless only a new form of the fundamental continuity of Feeling.

The conception of a Plenum is further shown to be unavoidable when we come to inquire into the nature of that void which is supposed to exist in the interstices of molecules, and in the interplanetary spaces. Space is the abstract of coexistent positions; its concretes are bodies in the various relations of position; but in our abstraction we let drop the bodies, and retain only the relations of position; although a moment's consideration suffices to show that were there no bodies, there could be no positions of bodies, consequently no relations of coexistent positions,-in a word, no space. If, therefore, by interspaces between molecules or planets we understand simply the relations of position of these bodies, we may indeed conveniently abstract these relations from their related terms, and treat of spaces irrespective of bodies; but we may not from this artifice conclude that between these related terms there is a solution of the continuity of Existence,-that between the bodies there is a void.

It is held that, were our senses sufficiently magnified, we might see the molecules and atoms distributed throughout what now appears a mass, much as we see the constellations distributed among the vast spaces of the heavens. Perhaps; but even then our magnified senses would discover no solution in the great continuum. Necessarily so, since by no possible exaltation of an organ of sense could the Suprasensible be reached. The void-if it exist-cannot be felt, and the only Existence knowable by us is the Felt.

Hence the idea of action at a distance is absurd, if the distance be taken to represent any solution in the material continuity, which is the continuity of the Agent whose Agency is the action; but the idea is intelligible and true if the distance be taken to represent simply the relative positions of the body from which the action is supposed to originate, and the body in which it is completed. 1 See his "Electricity and Magnetism," vol. I., pp. 58, 65, and 123.

CHAPTER XVI.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES (CONCLUded).

The Relation of Universal to Organic Activities-Lewes' Theory of Perception.

To the reader who may have followed thus far the argument here presented, perhaps it will not be too much to say that Metaphysics is a completed study. The problem of the Ultimate Reality, which has puzzled thoughtful humanity from Aristotle to the present day, has, owing to the vast logical movement of this age of Evolution, at last achieved its own solution, and we stand emancipated from the mysteries of idealism and the discouragements of skepticism, with naught to fear for the integrity of human knowledge. The logical position which an ultimate analysis occupies is invulnerable. There is, perhaps, no keener pleasure than to observe the resistance which it offers to the attacks of trained men of science. If they reason from a statical basis, postulating matter as an ultimate fact, "a substance which remains after all properties have been accounted for," they fall into the error of neglecting the very property by which we appreciate facts, namely, their activity. If they postulate this activity and deny to it extension or position, they again involve themselves by first employing a symbol and then withdrawing its meaning; for no fact can be expressed without conceding to it extension or position. The course to be pursued in such a controversy is to watch carefully for terms having the same meaning as Space, such as Infinite, Coexistence, Matter, Substance, Status, Position, etc.; or the equivalents of Time, such as Absolute, Abstract Sequence, Force considered as the cause of motion, or Motion consid

ered apart from its space aspect; or the equivalents of Motion, such as Life, God, Power, First Cause; and, when these terms are used, to insist upon giving them their full significance. Nothing can withstand the force of such an analysis. It is soon perceived that by employing abstractions, we recede from the particulars of life to the first or simplest fact, the initial relation of personal and general existence.

It is therefore with feelings of the utmost relief that we take leave of the abstractions of metaphysics and take up the remaining three volumes of Lewes' philosophic writings purely as a scientific study, neglecting any thing we may find in them pertaining to ontological questions.

Indeed Lewes seems to have written these last volumes in much the same spirit as that in which we would review them, for we find in them, after all, but little that is strictly metaphysical.

The first of these is entitled the "Physical Basis of Mind," and deals with the following problems: "The Nature of Life"; "The Nervous Mechanism"; "Animal Automatism," and "The Reflex Theory." The second contains the problems: "Mind as a Function of the Organism"; "The Sphere of Sense and the Logic of Feeling"; "The Sphere of Intellect and the Logic of Signs." The last is the brief work entitled "The Study of Psychology."

It is our purpose merely to select from the above problems the most striking lessons, so as to convey a general idea of the results to which Lewes has attained, and to define their relations to what has already been indicated as a complete philosophy.

A minute study of the procedures of organic growth shows how difficult it is to avoid the theory of a design in nature. All human efforts are so intimately connected with design, that it is difficult for us to look upon natural sequences in any other light. The great masters in biological research have felt this difficulty, and, for the most part, yielded to it. Thus "Von Baer, in his great work, has a section entitled

'The Nature of the Animal Determines its Development'; and he thus explains himself: 'Although every stage in development is only made possible by its pre-existing condition, nevertheless the entire development is ruled and guided by the nature of the animal which is about to be; and it is not the momentary condition which alone absolutely determines the future, but more general and higher relations.'" The form that this superstition generally takes is the belief that an organism is determined by its type, or, "as the Germans say, its Idea." "All its parts take shape according to this ruling plan; consequently, when any part is removed, it is reproduced according to the Idea of the whole of which it forms a part. Milne Edwards, in a very interesting and suggestive work, concludes his survey of organic phenomena in these words: 'In the organism every thing seems calculated with a view to a determinate result, and the harmony of the parts does not result from any influence which they can exert upon one another, but from their co-ordination under the empire of a common power, a preconceived plan, a preexisting force.' "This," continues Lewes, "is eminently metaphysiological (superstitious). It refuses to acknowledge the operation of immanent properties, refuses to admit that the harmony of a complex structure results from the mutual relation of its parts, and seeks outside the organism for some mysterious force, some plan, not otherwise specified, which regulates and shapes the parts. *** Let us note the logical inconsistencies of a position which, while assuming that every separate stage in development is the necessary sequence of its predecessor, declares the whole of the stages independent of such relations! Such a position is indeed reconcilable on the assumption that animal forms are moulded 'like clay in the hands of the potter.' But this is a theological dogma which leads to very preposterous and impious conclusions; and whether it leads to these conclusions or to others, positive Biology declines theological explanations altogether. *** The type does not dominate the conditions, it emerges from them; the animal organism is not cast in a mould, but the