:' I THE GIFT OF A.5«MS^1 /^Ji^LJaa t± B945.B53'' P5 " """"'"'"' ''"'"^ ''*^' amiPmX,,^!, individuality; or. The one 3 1924 029 063 456 The date shows when this volume was taken. To renew this book copy the call No. and give to the librarian. HOME USE RULES. 10"D'U&- Interiibrafy Loan'. All Bo«ks subject to Recall. Books not used for instruction or research are returnable within es of periodi- cals and of pamphlets are held in the library as much as possible. For special purposes they are given out for a limited time. Borrowers should not Uiie their library leges for the bene- iSt of other persons. Books not needed during recess periods should be returned to the library, or arrange- ments made for their return during borroTi' er's absence, if wantec. Books needed by more than one person are held on the reserve list. Books of special value and gift books, when the giver wishes it, are -not allowed to circulate. Readers are asked to report all cases of books marked or muti- lated. Do not deface books by marks and writing. Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029063456 The Philosophicdi Review EDITOR'S OFPIOIil MAY ;, _ CORNELL UNIVERSITY Itliaca, N. Y. THE Philosophy of Individuality OR THE ONE AND THE MANY BY ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL AUTHOR OF '' G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND ffl^Ije ^nkktxbachi ^wss 1893 h.^'^ir, Copyright, 1893 BY ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by Ube Tftnicfterbochcr press, mew l^orb G. P. Putnam's Sons PREFACE. In every book there is both the topic under considera- tion and the method of its treatment. The present work, being a theory of the inherent correlations of all processes, attempts to give correlative explanations also. Nature's proceedings are held to be rhythmic in char- acter, physical changes tending to return upon themselves and unprogressively to repeat their inherent cycles of changes, except when psychical gains, which wind up- wards in continuous spirals, carry up the physical with them, as in all normal organization and its processes. In dealing with the complexity and multiplicity of natural phenomena, the writer has tried to follow the lead of the theory in the assumed explanations — repeatedly returning to the same themes and presenting their various aspects. This method may have many advantages, but admit- tedly it has the serious disadvantage of treating no one branch of the subject either consecutively or exhaustively, since every point is brought forward rather in the light of its co-ordinations than that of its intrinsic character and importance. Thus no subject assumes to be ade- quately discussed in all of its aspects, or to be presented otherwise than as specially illustrating and confirming the central theory of a correlated persistent individuality in iv PREFACE. each of the ultimate units of Conditioned Being. These individuals are supposed to be innately conditioned in working correlation, and to obtain their mental evolu- tion through mutual aid from inherently adapted co- operations. The method of the discussion leads to partial repetitions, which are increased by the desire to keep each section of the subject measurably distinct and complete in itself. As to the underlying principle of persistent individ- uality, there seems to be no room for misgiving. In the preface of The Physical Basis of Immortality, published in 1876, were these words: "Men may yet reasonably hope to find a more comprehensive rendering of the scheme through which definite U7tits of beitig, physical and psych- ical, may persist as units, and yet be able to co-operate endlessly in a system of universal changes." The theory of persistent mind-matter individuals was nearly as distinct and quite as fully accepted by me then as now. Taken as an admitted premise. Immortality for all conditioned being was the only logical conclusion. But it was not then sufficiently apparent that this con- ception of the ultimate atoms could consistently explain and harmonize mental and material phenomena, and by co-ordinated interpretations of the most diverse processes simplify and unify Nature and her manifestations. This assumption may not now be fully conceded. Then we can do no more than appeal again to each and every class of phenomena to justify the theory or otherwise to dis- credit it conclusively. The motion-feeling individualities afford a consistent explanation of the possible emergence of the Relative from the Absolute by the intervention of Beneficent and Rational Causation. They would be sufificient evi- dence that the All of Being must be Intelligent Living Power which everywhere " makes for righteousness " by sustaining the ultimate beings, so conditioned that they PREFACE. V are impelled to increase in knowledge and to desire a higher excellence both for themselves and for others. Have we demonstrated a conscious immortality ? Yes ; if our leading premises are accepted. Yes ; if the conver- gence and accumulation of testimony are of more value than pure logical deductions. CONTENTS. 1. Introductory ...... 2. The Scope and Character of the Inquiry 3. What is Motion ? . . ... 4. The Rhythmic Atom 5. Matter a Complex of Modes of Motion 6. Light, Heat, and Sound and their Transfer ENCE 7. Electricity and Magnetism 8. Radiation and Gravitation 9. Summing Up . 10. Correlated Mind and Matter 11. Organic Life and Mind 12. Organization on its Physical Side . 13. The Nascent Mind and its Environment 14. Correlated Theory . ... 15. Conscious Mind and Co-operative Organism 16. The Evolution of Mind 17. The Mind and its Co-operant . 18. In Consciousness and Out of Consciousness 19. The One and the Many .... Index I 26 36 56 77 115 145 179 200 244 270 292 315 341 356 387 420 451 479 513 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Fig. I — Rhythmic atom midway in vibratory elonga- tions and retraction 50 Fig. 2 — Rhythmic atom half-way in direct phases 6^ Fig. 3 — Rhythmic atom half-way in reverse phases . 64 Fig. 4 — Rhythmic atom. Horizontal vibrations two- thirds elongated ; perpendiculars two-thirds retracted ....... 65 Fig. s — Rhythmic atom. Horizontal vibrations elon- gated.; perpendiculars retracted . . 66 Fig. 6 — Rhythmic atom, with curved vibrations mid- way in direct phases ..... 67 Fig. 7 — Rhythmic atom, with curved vibrations. One group elongated, the other retracted . 68 Fig. 8 — Two-atom molecule united by complementary vibrations ..... 85 Fig. 9 — Two-atom molecule united by complementary vibrations .... 86 Fig. 10 — Two atoms in position to unite by homologous vibrations . . . . 87 Fig. II — Two-atom molecule united by homologous vibrations ...... 90 Fig. 12 — Three atoms in position to form a chemical molecule ...... 91 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Fig. 13— Three-atom molecule united by homologous vibrations ...•••• 94 Fig. 14— Three-atom molecule united by homologous vibrations . ... -95 Fig. 15 — Five atoms in position to form a chemical molecule ... . . 9^ Fig. 16 — Five-atom molecule united by four A and four B vibrations ...... 99 Fig. 17 — Atom in magnetic stress . . . . 152 Fig. 18 — Atom in electrical stress .... 153 Fig. 19 — Vibrations before surface contact . 159 Fig. 20 — Vibrations at moment of surface contact . . 159 Fig. 2 1 — Same vibrations electrified and connected with the circuit ....... 159 p ^^p ^^ ^g K w^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^3 ^^S THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY OR THE ONE AND THE MANY INTRODUCTORY. Truth like daylight is presented to every eye ; but all truth is not like daylight — so obtrusive that every open eye is flooded with it unsought. The daylight shows us visible bodies ; but truth is hidden largely within the visible, and whoever would find much of it must penetrate a long way beneath the surface of things. The distinct simple explanations of the past, so obvious and reasonable that they compelled an early acceptance, have generally proved to be no more than partial truths often heavily veiled with illusions. As facts accumulated, the apparently self-evident hypothesis became much too scanty to cover all of them satisfactorily. It proved to be not only too narrow and too short, but too rigid in its unqualified simplicity ; a progressive broadening, modify- ing and eliminating, was compelled on all sides. This is claimed to be the true cognitive method. No primitive man could have dreamed that color was not wholly an objective fact. The green leaf, the red apple, the golden orange, in color and form, were entirely 2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. independent of himself. Now, science teaches us that the sensation of color must be subjective ; and as form is by- no means as simply solid as it appears to our perceptions, that the mind must in some way do its own share of the work in enabling us to see both the solid form and the vivid color. Heat and light, long felt to be undoubtedly forms of subtle matter, are found to belong to a kindred type of inconceivably rapid successive infinitesimal waves of motion. Scores of similar examples could be given in which theory, hastily adopted from first appearances, has been progressively modified. New facts not only accumu- late, but they are found to reach onward in such unexpected directions that explanation is compelled to grow also in order to explain. Moreover, in all growth there is not merely addition of the new ; there is at the same time an enforced sloughing off of the old. Theory can no more perfect itself without this double process than the embryo can become the per- fect organism without both accumulation and rejection of the material with which it deals. Maturer explanation, like the growing physical organism, tends to become more complex than the original from which it sprang. One apparently adequate cause very probably becomes merged in an entire group of co-opera- tive causes, each producing its own portion of the common effect. The simple theory becomes a complex cluster of theories. Its parts become better defined, and the division of explanatory diverse phases becomes much more com- plete and distinct though increasingly remarkable in adaptations each to each. Nature's differenced processes are found to be sharply and well defined. Heat is heat distinctively ; it is never identical with light. Electricity differs from both, yet is pro- gressively manifesting itself as more and more akin to both. Magnetism, closely allied to electricity, yet is not electricity. Then there are determinate grades of heat, of light, of INTRODUCTORY. 3 electricity, of magnetism, and of all other modes of energy. Explanation broadens in correspondence. With this growing diversity of theory, there is also a growing belief in a broadly underlying unity. The facts of Nature evidently must all be brought together in one comprehensive and co-operative interpretation. Science is increasingly confident that the higher simplicity but awaits discovery, which must be near at hand. A theory is nothing more nor less than the best expla- nation of data known to the special theorist — which he tries to harmonize and to account for from his own point of view. The explanations of the but semi-historic savage, of the average man of to-day, and of the highest scientific authorities differ only as to the accuracy and the compre- hensiveness of their respective knowledge of the subjects explained, and their several abilities in relating fact to fact in a consistent, inclusive whole. Complex explanations may be as lucid, adequate, and satisfactory in their wider, more complicated domain as the simpler ones in their narrower range. Both aim at rational and probable interpretations of things. Whenever and however a theory seems fully to explain the facts, it must, in the absence of any other equally or more satis- factory, be accepted provisionally by every mind which is able and willing to accept the point of view of the theorist and to comprehend the force of his reasoning. One accepts an apparent subjective truth as certainly as he accepts an apparent objective truth. Most minds believe in both alike. Nature's data being eminently complex and interde- pendent, it becomes probable that no explanation which covers a comprehensive group of resemblances with differences can be entirely simple in its character. The interdependence of its parts may strengthen the unity of the whole ; may internally relate it into an indissoluble oneness — in much the same way that the multiplicity of 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. Nature's processes are yet evidently correlated in one universe. Every step forward leads onward to the next, as the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis in orderly succession. Theory, habitually enlarges rather than con- tracts ; yet, like organic growth, it proceeds by simultaneous assimilation and expurgation. Generalization harmonizes many heterogeneous details; but the dissimilarities are still there and in active exercise, each of its own peculiar modes, although included in one all-comprehending category. The generalization is one, but the countless differentiated processes may remain to be themselves explained. Classification can only classify the similarities ; it is concerned with a kind of knowledge, deep and penetrating, but, as usually made available, is simply abstracted from the thousand accompanying miscel- laneous possible cognitions. The more general a classifica- tion of this sort, the more exclusive must it become of everything special or distinctive. A vertebrate may be a mouse or a man ; the classification gives us one grand characterization of both, but it is not inclusive of the distinguishing characters of either. Knowledge of these cannot be gained from classification. The great desideratum is to find a principle vsrhich is inclusive of every detail of every process ; of quite every phase of all phenomena. If there be such a principle, peculiarities, finding their place here, would in no sense impair the unity of the whole, but would accentuate it rather ; as the individuality of a man is more pronounced than that of a horse or a fox. These unclassified traits need explanation. The superficial view of an object is not essentially false ; it is only imperfect ; it reveals so much of reality, but not the whole of it. To find that, one must look deeper, to say nothing of going farther afield to discover its relation- ships. Solidity, recognized by the hand, is not manifest to the eye, and solidity affirmed to sensation by touch is' INTROD UCTOR V. 5 not entirely justified to the mind which has gained a dis- criminating knowledge of material structure ; yet neither sight nor touch are false ; they are both imperfect, and not fine enough to discern all of the structural mysteries of complex organization. The apparent is never the false, though the inferences drawn from it may be widely astray, as judged by ampler knowledge. Inference, hampered by limitation, may be legitimate from its own premises ; if so, it is some part of the larger truth and may become a stepping-stone in the right direction. Applied logic, like applied vision, or touch, or investigation in any other form, is but one means of testing reality. Theory and fact move hand in hand. In the acquirement of knowledge neither is without the other, since each must be tested and confirmed or rejected by its associate. The something known and the something which knows are held to be strictly co-operative and (prop- erly interpreted) to be but the two aspects of one process. Relation is not always between things like in kind, and relation itself may belong to unlike, not convertible, but inseparable functions of the same activity. It is a standing criticism of ancient philosophers that they theorized upon a much too slender foundation of observed facts. This still is, and indefinitely must con- tinue to be, a universal failing — if the criticism is just. But inadequate philosophy is much better than none at all ; science and philosophy, data and explanation, must progress together as they always have done in the past. It is eminently unprofitable to the individual to accumu- late lumbering masses of indeterminate facts, at sixes and sevens with each other and with the classified data of science ; but the accurate observers are the conservative steam-tugs, hovering about the ports and towing more adventurous vessels into safe harbor. Division of labor is desirable. Nevertheless, no mind ever succeeded in good constructive work without a series of hypotheses as a 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. framework into which accumulating data, whether collected by one's self or selected from the general storehouse, could be successfully placed in orderly relationships. Ancient theorists, like the modern, were only struggling bravely to explain the facts, principles, and relations underlying their every-day observations. Herbert Spencer analyzes consciousness into successive small sensitive shocks and the relations which arise between these primitive elements. The shocks are called " vivid impressions " ; but the relations between them, " faint im- pressions." Students of pure objective science seem dis- posed to make a similar classification in their department. Physical data — Nature's facts — they regard as tangible, actual, verifiable — the real elements of knowledge ; but explanations of the relations between these reals they class as metaphysics, philosophy, " faint impressions," supposed to be more or less misleading, wasteful as a use of energies which might be much better employed, and in any case no better than unprovable vagaries. At one time the " mere theorizer " was at an immense discount. But an enlargement of the comprehensive field of accepted knowledge has always been in process, and this has meant frequent radical revision, sometimes from the foundations upwards— though less of the observed data than of their interpretations. Scientific truth has been advanced hitherto about equally by the discovery of facts and by the discovery and announcement of the relations which are shown to relate the facts into a comprehensible whole. It has been found that the bare details of tangible things could only straggle in like homeless wanderers to a cold house if there were no life-giving theory present to bid them welcome and to establish their fraternity. The unrelated detail could neither recognize itself nor its kindred. It must remain helpless and idiotic unless warmed into life by some process of co-operation. INTROD UCTOR V. 7 Explanation has proved to be the soul of all science, though its soul and body are inseparable. Theories are the mind's attempts at comprehending the nature, the processes, the properties both of things and of their relations. If not subsequently tested critically by experi- mentation of every available kind, doubtless it is of little value to assured knowledge. There is no other method than that of appeal to facts, and the endeavor to penetrate to their inmost character and to that of their many relationships. But is it certain that tke things do radically differ from the relations between things ? The objects which we know are themselves relatives. May they not themselves be the conditioned products of exactly correlated, equivalent, and co-operative energies, so equilibrated or static in their results that they produce upon our perceptions the impres- sion of permanent substances, as distinguished from active associated energies whose activities are apparent ? Then is our cognition, either of things or of their rela- tions, any more wholly subjective than the object is wholly objective ? Is not perception and the knowledge which it gains a real outlook of the mind into the real nature of the object, gained also through active correlation between the two? What is the nature of correlative terms ? An ideal relation is not seen, nor is it manifested by its direct action upon any sense ; yet the relationship between, say, parent- hood and childhood is as real and is as really objective in its highest non-material sense as a permanent and actual fact as any material object can be. All knowledge of non-material or thought properties, concerning what we may appropriately call the nature of things, must be gained through mind-active, distinguished from mind-passive or receptive, as it is primarily in simple sensation. The mind acquires the one class of knowledge through insight, aided by mental comparison, inference, reasoning, and objective verification ; it acquires the other 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. from direct sense-testimony and like verification. One apple' is larger or smaller than another ; is sweeter or sourer than another; is rounder or less round than another. Through our eyes we see the large apple and the small apple ; but the sensation of seeing can never teach us the nature of difference between large and less large. The sensation produced in us by form and color is a living experience and a primitive knowledge ; but the resulting subsequent knowledge about form, color, and extension is a more discriminating mental process. Through taste we get the sensations sweet and sour, but sweetness discrimi- nated from sourness is not tasted but thought, and this wholly rational conception must come to us subsequent to the sensations. Given active intelligence and its laws, rational thought (organically assisted) everywhere medi- ates between simple sensations and transmutes them into subsequent ideas. Knowledge of the non-material relations of material things is not gained except through knowledge of the material things which are conditioned by their non-ma- terial relationships. In other words, the knowing mind and the objects known are alike constituted in accord with rational bonds corresponding each to the other. Between them there is harmony of quantities and quali- ties which are strictly correlative. It is the province of the mind to discover and analyze these ; to verify the reality and the exact correlativity of every known coexistence or sequence. It is our province in this treatise to attempt to show how and why this can be done. It is confidently maintained that the relations between mind and matter are not unthinkable ; but both relatives and correlations are unlike in kind. Matter works extensively, mind intensively ; the one is the manifestation of the real, the other of the ideal ; they work in true but special correlation, and together they constitute the broader correlated reality of total condi- INTRODUCTORY. g tional being. This more comprehensive reality — including both the material and the mental aspects of associated process — we have no term adequate to express. Matter and Mind are both forces, genetically differenced in kind, but each taking its share in all co-operative work. Ge- ometry, so interpreted, is not exclusively the science of pure space. It is rather the science of ideal forms, of figure with definitely related but differenced functions ; its first elements probably derived through the observation of real extensions duly related in thought. Ideal relationships, functions, principles — all non-ma- terial facts, — are ideal existences in the external as in the internal universe ; they are not created by the related mind ; they are discovered through direct and indirect perception to be the actual laws and processes of the extensive universe ; to be the regulated modes or methods of physical co-operation. The mind relates them abstractly in thought, tests them by their own innate con- sistency, draws its inferences from them — aided at every step by its co-operative brain mechanism, — and resubmits them to the outside world for its verification or revision. The absurdest fancies are possible as ideas. It would be more reasonable for a self-confident natural- ist who had never left his own county or his own state to dogmatize from his personal observation as to the flora, fauna, physical geography, and geology of the rest of the world, than for any thinker, after gaining a knowledge of few or many unquestioned truths, to attempt to build up real science or real philosophy by thought and reflection only. He is sure to run wildly off the track of real things, and once headed wrong, the more logical he is, the wider his divergence from the complexity of related orderly truth. We do well to remember that data generally, whether sense acquired or insight acquired, are presumably imper- fect and inadequate. We who see the sun rise, who fee/ the impenetrable solidity of transparent glass, who tasie lO THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. sweetness, as in the apple, who stand immersed in the beau- tiful world of the apparent, which we know is not real, as it appears, except to feeling, — we do well to remember that non-material relations, even themost obvious, taken objec- tively, are but parts of an infinite network of correlations which lie immeasurably outside of our direct cognizance — that our knowledge must be a growth. Nature's elements, material and immaterial, and all of her relationships being in part or in effect within the object known and equally within the knowing mind, hence all subjective relationing — after our best endeavors — must be immensely imperfect ; and our truly necessary con- clusions may be far from adequately fundamental. We must accept the existing order of things. But in the midst of the greatest complexity there has always been found to emerge a wonderful underlying unity of essential orderly method ; and this unity of method is the clue in threading every labyrinth of diver- sities. The wider the range of inquiry, the more mutually corroborative the cumulative testimony, but the more im- perative the need of persistent objective verification. K working hypothesis za.Ti.h&yjiS'u'n.&A by its agreement with comprehensive reality as assuredly as can the alleged physical facts upon which the hypothesis is based. It may more and more firmly ground itself upon an ever widening and increasing body of data — acquired largely perhaps by the lead and guidance which the theory itself is able to give. This body of data, tried, and rejected or accepted by the hypothetical standard, is capable in turn of helping to revise, to condemn, or to establish the theory. The interaction of empirical physical tests to which the mind submits its conjectures, is but one phase of the co- operation of the physical and the psychical. They work together whenever, wherever, and however mind begins to act as an efificient factor in the processes which include both the mental and the material. IN TROD UCTOR Y. 1 1 Thus philosophy sometimes anticipates the strictly scientific data ; and science perhaps as often compels a modification of philosophy. But as there can be no science without a philosophy, and no true philosophy not grounded upon a true science, the two are but the unlike aspects, the differentiated but co-operative phases or modes, of the same reality. In like manner consistency teaches us that mind and matter themselves are but related, differentiated aspects of one conditioned reality ; and that the individual unit of conditioned being is a mind-matter unity — created an individual by virtue of its innate correlations. The physi- cal and the mental, the real and the ideal, are equally real manifestations in the actual universe — real not only in partial glimpses, as we find them, but in one perfect whole of interdependent co-operation. Every inference is a brief hypothesis. Every system of philosophy is a systematic series of hypotheses. Super- ficial thinkers are prone to believe that philosophy herself is continually being discredited, whilst, in fact, like the chambered nautilus, she is only building new apartments from time to time more ample than the former. The larger rooms are each more or less the direct outlook from previous sections. Sight and insight ! they are both perceptions, the one of things, the other of the relations between things ; both wait for mutual confirmation. The time has fully gone by in which science seriously objects to Philosophy. So has that in which Philosophy expects to obtain a knowl- edge of the cosmos merely by persistent thought. For- merly, Philosophy was in the ascendant. Then the situation was briefly reversed. It is only yesterday since it was claimed that Science — meaning by that great name not much more than the classified results of observation and experiment — had become permanently dominant. But behold ! men speedily awoke to the knowledge that not 12 TBE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. Science in this limited sense, but the theories, the rela- tionships, the principles, and laws— the non-material m all its forms, which underlies all science— was everywhere under discussion. Not scientific facts, but scientific hypotheses, had filtered with varying clearness into every alert mind of average intelligence. Theology was found to be vigorously combating, not accredited, described, or presented facts, but the philosophy which science was beginning seriously to adopt as its explanation of certain relationships between facts. Men stood in sudden fear that there might arise a life- and-death conflict somewhere. But it was not a conflict of matter with matter, but of mind with mind, of philos- ophy with philosophy, of explanation with explanation. Theology is philosophy of a variety somewhat special to itself, and it paused in fear of other philosophies. Certain potent theories had become a mental framework into which science workers in every department were depositing their treasures, with the acknowledged neces- sity of establishing either the adequacy or the inadequacy of theory to sustain and illumine their ever fresh dis- coveries. It began to be realized that without the aid of his revolutionary theory, his grand generalization of Nat- ural Selection, Mr. Darwin would never have reached the marvellous number or the surprising accuracy and intelli- gence of his own personal observations, nor would he have collected, systematized, and rendered astonishingly more fruitful the observations of others. Without his theory he could never have achieved a hundredth part of his success in stimulating fresh zeal for scientific discovery and demon- stration ; nor without this could he have quickened the civilized world into keen interest or into substantial, if modified, acceptance of his conclusions. But also without Mr. Darwin's grand array of witness- ing facts, supplemented by other like accumulations from all quarters, the theory would have fallen dead — at least INTRODUCTORY. 1 3 temporarily. If there is no life in observed details except as they are vitalized by some rational interest, with such an interest the dryest facts, the heaviest statistics, the most distasteful items, become more fascinating than music or poetry. All great authorities in science are men who have been made illustrious by the discovery of some new but non-material principle through which many groups of data are bound together and made comprehensible. Facts prove the principle and lift it beyond the sphere of untested inference, into the domain of assured knowledge. Thus, Science is an orderly arrangement of established data, illuminated and classified by Philosophy ; and Phil- osophy is an interpretation of the deeper meaning, of the rational significance and relational dependence of the data presented by Science. Neither is without the other ; to- gether they present but one perceived and recognized related reality in its different aspects. This reality is both objective and subjective — these two phases arising also in correlation. The related, the conditioned, the limited, is truly but one vast complex of purely modal realties, of unlimitedly varied modifications arising through different and increas- ingly complicated co-operations. But underlying these changes is Power, Force, Energy, — Existence, uncondi- tioned, absolute, unlimited, infinite. Such Being — the acknowledged substratum of all changes — is also the con- cern both of science and of every philosophy. To many 'Cnxs, totality of existence — persisting through all duration — can be known to us only as a negation of the relative. To the " Synthetic Philosophy " our knowledge of it is at once the most positive affirmation ; yet this something, the Force which we so strenuously afifirm, is the Unknowable. One portion of our discussion must be an inquiry into the na- ture, the limits, and the modes, by which we have acquired enough knowledge of non-relative existence to deal with 14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. it intelligently in any sense whatever; and whether or not in parallel ways, as we hold, one can gain positive knowledge of, and positive knowledge about, absolute and unlimited Being. Meantime in our realistic related theories, all experience is a real of its own kind. Wrong conclusions are wrong in inference, are subjective mistakes, because of their nar- rowness or chosen fancifulness, not because a rational mind has any least tendency to become irrational. No system of thought offered in explanation of things has ever become extensively truly believed unless appar- ently self-evident ; unless it could be reasonably justified as judged simply from the point of view of its most strenuous advocates. We need only to put ourselves in the place, scrupulously and rigorously in the exact posi- tion, of any school of opinion, ancient or modern, in order to find evident reasons for fully believing the outlook to be rigidly commensurate with the theory held. Given that horizon only as the boundary of vision, the opinion can be made to appear essentially valid. The point of view may be low and the outlook narrow, but there is a sure correspondence between these and the line of thought, however really illogical when judged by any higher standard. Looking out now into barbarism or into any lower phase of belief, or groping backward into the various vagaries of opinion from the dawn of history to the present time, this truth of correlated action and reaction between ob- jective data and subjective theory will become more apparent the more thoroughly we enter into all the cir- cumstances. Unless there is some ulterior, self-blinding motive to bias the judgment, no one, except on sheer au- thority, can accept a belief if it does not commend itself either to heart or intellect. The weakest myths, as symbols, mean something; though early traditions were shallow and needlessly gro- INTROD UCTOR Y. 1 5 tesque, because, like children who delight in " make believe," the people amused themselves by embellishing their highest truths with less than half-believed fancies. That any inconsequent mythology, if literally understood by those who held it, was yet fully accepted by them, seems to be vastly improbable. Each mythical story rises in dignity just in proportion to the dignity of its embodied meaning. Folk-lore of the graver sort, handed down through the council-fire-talks or nursery repetitions of many peoples and many genera- tions of the same peoples, gives various evidence that it has been nowhere more than half literally accepted. It was adopted largely as a superstition, as a something kindred with the dark ; how much was true and how much false belonged to the unknowable. In prosperity it was forgotten, but was resorted to in adversity ; and it influ- enced conduct with a vacillating power, as circumstances made the half-believer brave or cowardly at the moment. Many of the minor superstitions of to-day influence and partially enslave certain classes of minds in precisely that manner. Fun and earnest become curiously intermingled, as we find it in the plays of Halloween and similar inheri- ted divinations practised by our own young people, but where the amusement ends and belief begins neither they nor we can quite determine. The most absurd fetishes still elicit faint traces of credence. Wherever belief has risen to the dignity of a religion with an established worship, there, along with indications of childisli pretence and evidences of mingled doubt and acceptance, is also an embodiment of the best and highest truths then and there known. Promises are given of the most which can be hoped for, and efforts are proposed for warding off the worst which is dreaded. The founder of the faith seems to have honestly tried to discover and to accept something credible and helpful to himself and others. He has embodied the best he could attain to l6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. with much pondering, and he truly has gained new and grand beHefs as measured by those of his contemporaries. His truth mingled with puerile enthusiasms and in- herited superstitions, yet in the main it was a philosopher who gave of his best as he saw it and as he attempted to establish it for the guidance of others. We may fairly infer that no early worship originated exclusively or mainly in that solemn despair of finding truth, which, failing to find it, could deliberately stoop to invent Hes in the guise of beliefs, symbols, and hopes, to be used for promoting the simple good of the many, who might be expected to find courage and strength from the acceptance of such pure fictions. The great behefs were there— if consciously embellished to some extent by puerile, half-believed fictions still useful for the dark days. Later teachers, founders of new, or fresh expounders of old, faiths or sects may be more freely credited with the sceptical spirit of expedient pious frauds. There is much temptation to this, as it may so easily arise half uncon- sciously in seeking to uphold a partially outgrown faith, or any portion of a formulated creed. Consistency for one's self and in the eyes of others, the spirit of excited partisanship, a bid for popularity, pecuniary considera- tions, personal ambitions in any form, undoubtedly lead towards a modern insincerity which is as unwilling to face the light, even in its own consciousness, as'the most extra- vagant myth-makers could have been in the earlier ages. Then there isthe woful lack of self-confidence, the doubt as to where concessions will lead in the final outcome, and the general fear of evil results. Besides, it is felt that the mighty truths are really there as a basis ; they are the lights which shine part way even into the dark places where cowardice and any taint of insincerity neglect to look too scrupulously. But to continue to teach any body of doctrines or dogmas, religious or secular, which are neither believed IN TROD UCTOR V. 1 7 from apparently conclusive evidence, nor held upon the responsibility of some supposed higher authority that one dare not question, nor held to by the unreasoning glow of fervid temperament, would be so intolerable, if there were no blinding power of self-deception, that down- right hypocrisy in teaching acknowledged falsehood must be very exceptional. But men differ in moral calibre ; and coupled with prestige, position, power, wealth, and an un- settled code of morals, one must grant the possible temp- tations. Doubtless it is harder to maintain unyielding integrity in the presence of partial truths whose limitations are recognized by one's self, but not outgrown in the thoughts, still less in the feelings, of the majority, than to be upright in adopting opinions concerning which no prejudice has yet given a popular verdict. Difficulties of this class apply with almost equal force to all classes of progressive knowledge — social, govern- mental, religious, philosophical, and scientific. The pride of consistency, the conceit of a personal omniscience, the clannishness of partisan feeling, the love and reverence for the opinions of one's ancestors or one's revered teachers, and the active sympathy for one's early and much cher- ished and most honestly adopted convictions, are all so many formidable lions in the way of all genuine progress. If the world could learn to thoroughly and cordially accept the fact that, in the very nature of things, growth in knowl- edge — mental growth, — like organic growth, must be not only a continuous assimilation, but also and almost equally a continuous disassimilation or a giving up of outgrown opinions, human advancement would at once become more than fourfold in rate and tenfold in the directness of its progress. Let it become clearly recognized that the phenomenal, the most superficially or distortedly apparent, is not the false, but the narrow ; is not the sheerly delusive, but the non-discriminated, and that conclusions based upon the l8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. most shallow perceptions are true in the light of that point of vision, but must be abandoned as soon as a wider outlook has been gained, as certainly as a child must put on new garments when he has outgrown the old, and with no more shadow of discredit in the one case than in the other. The much-quoted dispute over the shield with its two faces is in point. But vastly more is meant here than that incident illustrates. When the child believes he sees the green color in the tree, he does see it there ; that is, he sees the objective cause of the green color which really does belong to the tree ; he is looking at and thinking only about the object, and he has not yet thought of any relation between his feelings and their objective cause. His conclusion is legitimate from the only point of view which he has yet gained. If he tastes one of the apples which has fallen from the tree he affirms that he is tasting a sweet apple ; and again, looking only at the objective side of the case, he is right in his inference. But question the child. Ask him if he believes that the feeling of sweetness in his mouth is in the apple also. As soon as he entirely understands the question he promptly answers no. That is not in the least his idea when he affirms that the apple is sweet. He is only sure that it is the apple which gives him the sensation of sweetness, the leaves which make the impression of greenness ; and his cognition, his inference, gained from his premises, is as literally correct as that of the wisest scientific authority, who assures us that the sensations of greenness and of sweetness are purely subjective — that all feeling is in the mind and not in the object. Again, most people believe when they see a body which appears to be round and solid, like an apple, that the ap- pearance is real and not delusive. And so it is from that standpoint. Looking at only one side of the apple, they correctly infer both the completed roundness which they INTRODUCTORY. 19 would see if they looked at it on all sides, and the solidity, as resistance to pressure, which they would experience from a sense of touch. Judging from such premises as they have, they know the apple in its manifested proper- ties of roundness and solidity. So far as it goes, we maintain that this is a true and accurate knowledge of the manifested properties. They know that knowledge differs from the thing known. But a physicist has learned by various careful experi- ments that the apple is composed of small invisible pieces whose centres are really a very long way apart ; that these minute pieces are all in some kind of rapid motion, which is so swift that it leaves upon our vision an effect as though they completely filled the entire space — as a lighted brand moved swiftly to and fro seems to fill the whole space through which it moves. Of course the rapidly re- curring push which these little particles give where any attempt is made to displace them is equivalent to a per- petual resistance when estimated by our slow senses. The knowledge of the physicist is both immensely more minute and comprehensive, more learned and more able to justify its conclusions by logical appeals to the testi- mony of the facts ; his premises have become marvellously expanded into new and wider relationships, but we main- tain that, given their respected premises to judge from, the cognition of the common man as to the properties of the apple are as correct as those of the physicist. Thus perceptions gained through the unsupplemented senses are as accurate from his standpoint as are those of the other from his higher and wider outlook. Knowledge is knowledge of data which come into our experience. We perceive so much as we do perceive, and we make our inferences accordingly ; but the baby as soon as he observes anything, observes a real object, whatever that may be, and not a delusion. So soon as he begins to reason, there is nothing in the nature of things 20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. which should prevent his judgments from being as true to their own data as Sir Isaac Newton's were to his. What then shall we say of apparitions which have no " objective reality " ; of dreams, fancies, and illusions of all kinds ? Simply that the mind being correlatively under the domination of a disordered nervous mechanism, this organic machine more or less forces and controls the per- ceptions, even introducing its resultant phantasm, which becomes the real object perceived — a kind of real which may or may not have some extra-organic basis. A man seen through a fog may be taken for a giant, an old dress in the moonlight may take on the sly, cruel face of a robber, and a grating noise afar off may sound like very sweet music near at hand. Such examples only show that more than one objective cause co-operates in producing every perception, and that the mind itself is in some way a co-partner powerful enough to make its own mental at- titude the platform from which its own operations uni- formly proceed. That the mind often sees about what it expects to see, is very fair evidence of the potency which it can bring to bear in its study of things and the nature of things. Our position then is that the character of every percep- tion and of every cognition, and of every mental act of all kinds is dependent in definite degrees upon each and all of the co-operating factors, psychical and physical, which together make up the entire process of every act in which the sensibility is consciously concerned. In other words, all change, all action (change and action include both feeling and motion), is so entirely under the control of definite law that the sequence of every, thought is fully determined by its correlatives of all kinds, in the sense that it must obey the associated laws of thought and of things. The mind must perceive objects, must know them, and must reason about them legitimately — in true accord with its own mental attitude working in correspond- INTRODUCTORY. . 21 ence with the organism and the extra-organic world. Thus, under normal conditions, every mind is compelled to recognize and to accept the evidence presented to it and adequately comprehended, with precisely as much certainty as it must have the sensation of a tree when with healthy open eye the attention is directed towards the tree. The clear cognition is in no sense a matter of choice provided all of the accompanying conditions unite in producing it. But one may close his eyes, doubtless according to accurately established laws, but certainly entirely at his own option, provided he has the proper control of his organism. In that case the tree may be there still, and may be still actively soliciting his attention, which he refuses to give by opening his eyes and looking at it, and consequently he does not perceive the tree. In an analogous way one may close off the representa- tive vision, the insight into the nature and relations of things, and in this way he may refuse to reach any con- clusion which is presented to him. The mind has a par- allel kind of liberty to blind itself to represented knowledge of any kind, and to shut itself off from sensations of any kind ; but provided all of the normally correlated factors are in full co-operation, true and adequate cogni- tion is as inevitable as sensation. The blind man can learn nothing about the world through the visual organs ; the near-sighted person, without the aid of glasses, has a much more limited range of vision than his neighbor; one with diseased nerves may see things double or quad- ruple or topsy-turvy, in any way that his nerves direct ; and by a like weakness, non-development or abnormal de- velopment of the co-operative organism, the intellectual powers may be compelled to act feebly or perversely. One may be a brilliant reasoner one day and a practical idiot the next — not because the individuality is lost or de- stroyed, but because it has lost the present possibility 22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. of taking part in those co-operative processes which evolve rational sensibility. If skilfully trepanned a week later, the whole mental activity may be restored by the restoration to normal action of its co-operative allies — the delicate tissues of the unconstrained nerv- ous mechanism. Nature's co-partnerships are all con- ducted with equal exactness and equity. Her operations are all co-operations. Why then condemn the masses, male or female, to a prolonged childhood through any insincerity of teaching? The true policy of the leaders in education must be that of encouraging every one to acquire truth confidently for himself. The worst opinions, if diligently obtained by personal effort, are better for a man than the best blindly accepted traditions. Nothing but use ever yet has strengthened faculty. Individual effort is the one rock upon which to ground the true Republic in every depart- ment of inquiry, and only through universal activity can arise the compacted solidarity of results, even in the high- est reaches of philosophy and in the deepest problems of science. The crudest opinions doubtless will abound to the vex- ation of wiser souls under any system which fosters inde- pendent judgment ; sects and divided councils may become as many and as inevitable in physical and psychical inquiry as they have become in the religious world since Martin Luther's time ; but all these are the stepping-stones to a higher level, though for the time not joyous but grievous to on-lookers. Mankind will investigate any subject in which they feel a personal interest and the sense of responsibility. They are perforce keen observers, reasoners, philosophers. No- where have they received too much, but everywhere too little incitement to investigate for themselves, and to state their own conclusions freely. Given a fair field, manifold physical Nature will do her share of that co-operative work INTRODUCTORY. 23 which evolves all personal sensibility. Every related truth is enfolded somewhere within the activities of ever-chan- ging but endless and forever correlated processes. The external reals will become each a witness for itself, and also for its associates. The fundamental principles upon which any scheme of thought and investigation is grounded must determine the character of the system even to many unexpected details. With every fresh shaping of basal elements emerge modi- fied aspects and explanations of the most familiar phe- nomena. This is not because the thinker willingly attempts to discredit teachings of justly credited, learned, venerated, great authorities, but because the new outlook, like the successive earlier ones, compels consistency of perception from the new point of view, compels revision and re- statement to the verge of unwarranted assumption. To withhold what one thinks he sees and knows would be the sheerest cowardice. New aspects, by presenting other relationships, and old ones under a modified light, necessitate revised explana- tions. Pitfalls surround every fresh enterprise. Weak or badly instructed minds easily put themselves into unten- able positions ; they observe carelessly or reason inconse- quently ; but each can only do his own best. It remains true, that observed deficiencies in concrete facts and their explanations, gaps unfilled, dark places unillumined, have always tended to push inquiry backward to first principles ; these, revised from time to time, every dependent inter- pretation of phenomena has received successive re-inter- pretation — with a general broadening both of the field of inquiry and of accepted knowledge. More intelligible, more vitally dependent relationships have steadily emerged in this way from that vast assemblage of existences and changes grouped as phenomena, and verbally unified as Nature ; but not yet unified in thought to the satisfaction of the philosophers of modern science. 24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. The present writer keenly feels the possibility of an unjustified audacity, both in attempting to revise the first principles and to make the subsequent applications— espe- cially the latter. Very abstract theories are difficult to disprove. They may hold their own creditably enough for years or centuries ; but when used in explaining the familiar facts of mind and matter and their every-day succession of changes, there may arise an ordeal from which one would most willingly escape. But to clear and positive convictions about subjects which concern the welfare of all, there is no escape ; and there is no way of proving any theory except that of testing it by the re- lated facts. Hence the present essay, which is itself a revised, a broadened, a more full attempt at verification of a system of thought less matured in the author's former works. Studies in General Science, and The Physical Basis of Immortality. Truth, when discovered, can find ways of getting itself so indisputably demonstrated, that it must become accepted. They who are best informed must first give it their undoubting credence. They best know whereof they affirm. If science would become an inven- tive art and avail itself of all the natural resources at its command its progress could hardly be overestimated. Philosophy, aiming to be " the complete and accurate expression of the essential relativity of the world, formu- lated in the most general propositions," cannot be experi- mentally tested at every step, like the concrete sciences ; but at each new move it can be challenged to halt and maintain its assumed advance. It must covet attack from every source, realizing that rational criticism wields a spear-point that searches out and exposes the weak places of defective theory. Attempting, as it does, the satisfactory explanation of all things substantial or relational, to be of ultimate value philosophy must reach down to abiding foundations, deep, solid, broad, and obvious enough to gain acceptance INTROD UCTOR Y. 25 from all thinkers who will make themselves adequately well informed. Such foundations undoubtedly exist, and wait to be discovered. If they had been found and clearly brought into view, they would have been recog- nized and generally accepted. The great diversity of philosophic opinion is conclusive evidence that the final generalization has not yet made its appearance. Until mankind have reached an all-comprehensive unanimity in philosophy, and a corresponding unification of science, there needs no apology for yet another attempt to find stable and non-paradoxical First Principles, which may take us yet a step nearer to the ultimate goal. THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY. Whoever seeks to construct a philosophy of Existence, absolute and relative — a philosophy which shall com- prehend the total of Being and the total of its changes, actual or possible, will probably recognize the gravity of the undertaking. Yet the attempt is not too ambitious. Humanity has never rested, will never rest, can never rest content till it has found satisfactory explanations adequate to include and interpret all things. This is not equivalent .to affirming that finite minds may hope to realize comprehensively the nature of in- iinite, absolute Being with its unconditioned attributes. To know that the Unlimited Absolute actually exists, and must permanently exist, is one knowledge ; to fathom and adequately to apprehend such infinite realities, is quite another. That the total of existences must be an absolute total — the whole of Existence, — we are compelled to think whenever thought about it becomes self-consistent. With the progress of knowledge it has come to be ad- mitted by all who have studied the subject, that the ever persisting, Being per se, can become, does become, neither more nor less. It cannot be thought to vary by either increasing, diminishing, or substantially changing; it simply is ; it remains. Neither can it be thought that this total of Being at any time began to be, or at any time can cease to be ; it 26 THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY. 27 is continuously one and the same through limitless Dura- tion, the actual only permanent Reality in itself. Duration is the Idea, the attribute, which expresses the continuance of this infinite and absolute Real. Duration w, while Being is, and because Being is, and persists; exists in absoluteness perfect and complete within itself. Materialists and Idealists alike accept the fact that abiding changelessness underlies and somehow sustains all changes. It is the substance of all phenomena. This some- thing in itself, as the totality of all things, must substan- tially include all phenomena ; must in some way originate all phenomena. These propositions have become axioms : something cannot arise from nothing ; something cannot lapse into nothing. The world of the forever-changing must be in some way evolved from, and in some way up- held in antithesis to, the abiding reality. We must en- deavor then to rationally comprehend, and be able intel- ligibly to state at least a possible, a distinctly thinkable method by means of which this superficial paradox can be merged into an entirely consistent, comprehensive whole. The enduring Totality is the Real to which Duration responds as the Ideal. If there could be an independent stream of Time down which Being absolute might have come from the past to the present, and with which it could move on to the future, nothing else exists by which to measure or estimate such change. Nothing indicates the possibility of such progression. If it occur, it is as though it were not. No change to which the whole of Being could be subjected could become appreciable to our modes of thought, which recognize all changes as pertaining to parts of the whole as discriminated from other parts ; to times and places discriminated from other times and places. If total Being were moving on in infinite space, there would be nothing else to estimate that by ; it would be as though it were not. There would be nothing to measure from, to measure toward, or to measure by, or in 28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. any way to indicate the direction of such change. The absolute total of Being must be, therefore, as unlimited spatially considered, as infinite extensively as it is in duration or protensively. Its extension is therefore an omnipresence. Ideal extensiveness or infinite space corresponds to unlimitedly extended Being per se, the Real. Again totality of Being must necessitate omnipotence. It includes all power, force, energy, the several names for the one real ; and however, whenever, wherever power is brought into exercise in the domain of the forever changing, in that act there is the immanence of the abso- lute in the relative. But what is The Relative ? Its most apparent charac- teristic is perpetual changeability, as certainly as the undisputed characteristic of the absolute is its non-change- ability. If the Absolute, as the Absolute, has varieties of action or passion, they belong to a type to which we are not adapted, which we do not and probably which we cannot comprehend — at any rate at our present stage of development. But the Relative may very fairly be desig- nated the inclusive, the apparently infinite complication of unresting changes. They arise in some order of suc- cession. But how ? The same piece of wax may take a thousand shapes ; but, while it continues to be the same wax, it will be neither more nor less in amount during the entire varying process of changing in form — which involves also some changing of place. Then if the wax has the shape of a round ball at one moment and in the next minute is pressed into the form of a square block and then into a triangular figure, these dii?erent forms must be progres- sively assumed and they must be assumed in succession — one form following another. These changes, then, occupy time as well as space ; but they are changes not in the substance of the wax but in some of its modes. They THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY. 29 are changes not in the being or existence of the wax, but changes in its modes of being or existing. This piece of wax in its non-changeableness in the sup- posed illustration may stand as a symbol of the non- changeable Absolute ; and its changes of form in time and space as the type of the universal Relative. The modes of differentiation in the wax are all formal or modal in kind. If we are ready to concede that all of the changes, all of the possible modifications which have arisen or which may arise in the Relative, belong exclu- sively to the formal or modal order, and that all such changes arise as literally within the Absolute Being and are of the Absolute in the same sense in which the various differenced forms pertain to the wax, there will then be no trouble in thinking clearly and definitely how the Relative may have arisen from the Absolute ; may co-exist with it ; in a very distinct sense may be in apposition to it ; and yet that this emerging Relative may be some- thing very determinate, definite, and positively real in all of its own changes. The round form of a piece of wax, the cube of wax, the triangle of wax, are quite as obtrusive facts to our sensa- tions as is that other fact that it is wax which has taken these several different shapes. Forms and changes of all kinds are of peculiar and special interest to the mind ; they are the kind of things which are exact and measur- able in terms of quantity. All representation concerns itself with forms and their colors ; we delight in changes of all kinds in ourselves, in others ; and we study the changes in things much more than we study the things themselves. We belong to a real world of changeableness quite as characteristically as we belong to an order of unchange- ableness ; yet we belong to both. The piece of wax, insignificant as it is when compared with the abidingness of Total Being, has yet a limited positive abidingness or persistence when compared with 30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. the changeability which can assume so many possible forms. It serves perfectly to illustrate two opposite types of co-existences both equally reals. It enables one to comprehend the adaptabihty, the innate fitness of the changeable to the unchanging. It suggests the inherent probability that some established order of modal changes should co-exist in connection with the abidingness of infinite and absolute Being. But the wax does not change of itself. Something must cause it to change, must act upon it to the same extent to which the wax reacts in resisting any change in its existing figure at each moment. A piece of iron of the same size or a piece of the same weight with the wax would resist change of form to a much greater amount than the wax. Very much more force must be brought to bear upon the iron in order to change its form from a round ball to the form of a cube. It appears from many and various experiments that the amount of power required to produce any change in a body acted upon must accurately equal the amount of power which that body can bring to bear in resisting such change. In other words, action and reaction in all physical pro- cesses must be equal and opposed in direction, and at that stage of co-operation the more dynamic mode will be able to overcome the resistance of the more static mode. The active mode does the work of undoing any condi- tion of a body upon which it acts, provided that condition has arisen from a loss by distribution of free motion in excess of its own ; that is, all modes of force co-operate as quantitative equivalents and in their co-operations they are active, true, correlated terms. But that term which represents the most free motion at any given instant, is the one which tends to communicate its mode to the other, and by that means to induce change in the relative condition of both bodies. THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY. 31 This, as it seems, is an explanation of the nature of physical process which is very nearly or quite synonymous with the current theory. It means that all physical modes arise and can arise only in correlation with equivalent modes, and that everywhere there is a tendency in the more active energies to radiate or flow onward in the direction of least resistance, and in the more static modes, by pitting themselves against each other, to produce those fixed resistances which we usually term bodies, matter, or solid matter, as wax, iron, plants, animals. Correlation or equivalent co-operation then, in con- nection with greater and less degrees of freedom of motion in the co-operative terms, is the cause or method which eventuates in all physical changes in the domain of Relative Being. All material correlations are mutual limitations of modes, are equivalent exchanges of energies upon a rigidly quantitative basis. But such exchanges are related in space and time, and in effecting them there is motion — definite modes of motion arising on both sides and the exchanges are literally exchanges of these several modes of motion. These correlated energies act through spaces definite in amount ; they act, change in form, or move in times definite in amount, and their exchange of modes is a real exchange of modes of motion. The correlation, then, is a determinate correlation between equivalent modes of motion. Matter therefore must be in some way constituted through correlated modes of motion. All of its changes must be produced in various ways, but always through combinations, co-operations of many kinds, and equivalent exchange literally between definite modes of motion. If these positions can be sustained then the physical world is literally one vast complex of associated and per- petually modifying and exchanging modes of motion, — of activities which are correlative at all points and in all times. 32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. But the piece of wax of our illustration, although in substance permanent and unchanging as compared with its changes of form, can be chemically dissociated till its divided particles will be no longer wax, but chiefly carbon. An atom of carbon has not yet been artificially subdivided, though it is not improbable that it may be hereafter. This particle of carbon and others like itself can assume many differentiated forms and yet remain carbon, but there must come a point at which, if the least particle of carbon is indeed constituted by primary correlated motions, should these ultimate correlations be disso- ciated, the divided parts would not only be no longer carbon but they would be no longer in relation, and would no longer belong to relative existence. We may divide all secondary relativities, such as arise in forming chemical compounds ; but in the nature of things primary correlated terms, if divided, must destroy the relativity itself, — must return the energy whose modes of action had been conditioned to progress in mutual dependence, back into the realm of the unchanging. Our problem does not involve any question of the infinite divisibility of matter as something to be cut into endlessly smaller and smaller pieces. Our atom is inde- structible so long as the primary terms which constitute it one individual atom are maintained in their integrity. Should all of these be dissociated. Relative Being would exist no longer. Everything would have returned infeo the undifferentiated Absolute — a catastrophe which it seems needless to contemplate. It is evident, then, that if the ultimate unit of the Relative is a permanent somewhat, conditioned by primary correlation which relates to forms and modes of changes, that this ultimate somewhat is the true permanent indi- viduality, and that it is an individuality in some way com- posed of endlessly changing forms and other modes which but repeat themselves, with modifications, in an endless THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY. 33 round or rhythm of changes. It appears that the least element of relative being must be persistently individual- ized. It is constitutionally indivisible and indestructible, because it is a true correlated existence. That there is an ultimate atom of matter is now almost universally believed. The only difference is, our theory maintains that the true origin and reason of the atomic existence and equally of its persistence must be found in its own innate but actively energetic correlativity. The correlativity and its inherent activity are both purely and exclusively atomic, but the individual atoms co-operate also interatomically, and through such copartnerships the purely atomic modes become increasingly modified though they remain exclusively atomic. In other words, absolute energy is brought into new uses through a conditioned system of methodical correlated changes, and it is our purpose to inquire into the nature, the relations, the modes, the results of these conditioned changes. As we hold that one indestructible result is the per- sisting atom of rhythmic motion or matter, if individual mind is also a permanent correlated existence, either it must exist wholly independent of matter or it must be conditioned in the same correlative group with the mate- rial atom and inseparable from it, though differentiated from it as a distinct kind or class of changes special to itself and specially conditioned in its own behalf. We assume that the latter is the true explanation — that mind and matter are two aspects of one being. Independent of all facts, it seems more probable that if a type of relative being was to be instituted it would be established in accordance with one general plan having many varie- ties, rather than that two distinct kinds of individuality should be separately started into being, each to be forever acting independently along its own independent lines. This would mean two distinct Relatives, each correlated 34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. in itself, but entirely out of relation with the other. No one has ever held that assumption consistently, unless possibly Leibnitz. But the facts all militate against the theory of two separate relativities. As minds work in and through bodies, the two are certainly in relation. But all influen- tial relation implies correlation — equivalent co-operation. To affirm that mind and matter are efficiently related is to affirm that they are correlated, each producing some equivalent efTect upon the other in all co-operation. The working character of these several differentiated correlativities must occupy a large part of our attention. How and why mind and matter co-operate, the nature of the modifications, of the evolution which results to both ; in what sense they are two, and in what still more intimate sense they are but one inherently conditioned unity, are matters with which we are deeply concerned. And in turning from the Conditioned back to the Unconditioned we may find that the light which has gathered about our pathway is reflected back a little way into even its fathomless depths. Whatever being or thing permanently exists must be known or knowable to any mind competent to recognize its existence and its characteristics. Whatever existence changes or acts according to definite methods must be recognizable as to its processes by every mind competent to appreciate the nature of such methods. Mind is, sub- jectively considered, z. feeling "power ; objectively related, it is a perceiving and knowing power. It has only properly to relate itself to the object, in a common process, when knowledge becomes the subjective resultant as certainly as when two motions, by a given process of co-operation, produce a perfectly definite resultant. This at any rate is the hypothesis of the present essay, and a position to be illustrated and defended in the progress of the following discussion. THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF THE INQUIRY. 35 Nothing is known or can be known, except so far as it is actually explained in consciousness. But consciousness never realizes fully the quantitativeness of things. On the contrary, it realizes or knows quantities in terms of qualities or degrees of tension, or of weights and densities ; as units and aggregates of units of a kind, etc. We per- ceive dimensions as they are presented to us ; we can our- selves represent them in thought or produce their likeness in a variety of materials, but we represent them as they were presented, and the apparent form, size, and general appearance is equally subjective and objective. Feeling is quality of experience ; and it is, as before noted, in terms of feeling that the objective reality is real- ized in consciousness. (Following the lead of Mr. Spencer, feeling, used in its broadest sense, includes all mental experiences.) But no one attempts to picture, mentally or otherwise, the dimensions of a mile, an acre, a circle around the earth, except by way of comparison. We measure distances by distances, quantities by like quanti- ties, amounts by their relations ; our conceptions are clear as to the kinds of which we are treating and as to the rela- tions between them, but these conceptions are gained through an experienced and related realization in the mind. Then, since it is impossible to image either a hundred miles or one mile, in that sense we assuredly do not know the Infinite ! But in that sense neither do we know any quantity beyond that which is actually presented to the senses. Except as a matter of reasoning and logical con- clusion, of legitimate inference, which is knowledge ; in other words, except as we realize all objective facts and processes in terms of subjective comprehension, the objective data remain unexplained, unknown. The theory that we must attempt to realize the how, the thinkable niethod, of every process, before we can be said to comprehend it, may afford a clue to the method of the following discussion. WHAT IS MOTION? The falling of a leaf, the movement of a stone tossed from the hand, the revolution of a planet about the sun, thought of as pure motions, are not generally supposed to be identical in kind with the substance of the leaf, the stone, and the planet. But the theory that matter is exclusively motion, is composed of variously associated elements of pure motion, is steadily gaining adherents and gaining in probability. Of course it is understood that motion, forever chan- ging as it is, is yet informed by persisting power ; and that every motion stands for a given amount of power, force, energy. It can be shown also that every motion has a definite amount of extension, actual space-occupancy, that its distinctive function is to change in form or mode, acting in or through space in some definite related time, and that the rate and amount of its action decides the amount of power brought into active exercise. With such material to aid us in gaining a clear concep- tion of what motion is, what it means, and what it can do, it ought not to be very difficult for one to realize that even motion, so endowed, besides being mathematically provided for as to all of its modes and directions by other motions which determine for it the exact character of its reactions, may prove to be entirely adequate to build up the most solid matter and to literally aggregate and " stress " itself into every known physical substance of the existing universe. 36 WHAT IS MOTION t 37 All philosophers recognize the persisting and the chan- ging to be generically unlike but inseparable aspects of related existence. They recognize the fact that every change is dependent in some way upon other changes, that every change of every kind, physical or psychical, is indebted to other changes either for the possibility of having a modal or correlative existence at all, or at any rate for its particular modes or forms of existing and changing. Its related indebtedness may include, as we hold that it does, both of these differenced causative conditions. All limitation is correlative. Everything which occurs in space and time is a product of changes correlated in space and time. A rhythmic atom of matter is one continuity of simultaneous and successive dependent changes correlated in space and time. Some aspects of the physical world are called matter, others are called motions ; but, interpreted by the rhythmic-atom theory, matter is purely motion. The tangible bodies termed substances are composed of interfering activities called motions, which occupy space and time ; and being opposed in direction their interfer- ences produce tensions, mutual resistances, which cumu- latively result in tangible extensions. Visible motions are the translations of these masses — translations pro- duced by outside correlated motions. Free motions, commonly called energies, are the dynamic overplus sent elsewhere whenever tensions or static modes are formed. Individual minds, our own and others, are held to be each one continuity of simultaneous and successive de- pendent changes correlated in time and sentience, or con sciousness. They are the inseparable living phases of the rhythmic changes — the feelings or emotions produced with the motions. That persisting power is immanent in all changes is freely conceded by every one. The conditioned individual becomes both the immanence and the changes — these 38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. latter being endlessly necessitated amongst themselves and by themselves because they are innately conditioned together— each phase of change a mathematical func- tion of the aUied changes of its correlates. It is the uses of immanent power which are conditioned. We live in a world where there are both unchanging and changing various relativities. Phenomena of all kinds are related more or less closely, so that not only are all operations co-operations, but all substances, properties, quahties, places, distances, directions, exten- sions, affirmations, negations, — everything, in brief, per- taining to this world about which we can either think or speak, in every aspect, is in some way in relation to something else. Our own perceptions and other senti- ent or felt experiences are known to be themselves the products of active correlativities. Scientific thought has accepted, or is rapidly approaching, this conclusion, and it is one which can be readily tested and confirmed. It follows that if there is an abiding unity of living or sentient being, conditioned by its own innate correlativ- ities ; if there is an ultimate physical atom which per- sists in the midst of all formal changes because of its correlated oneness ; and if these unlike aspects of Rela- tive Being are related in a still more complex many-sided individuality, as this essay maintains that all known facts indicate that they must be, then each phase of this con- ditioned individual should not only exist and act for itself, and according to its own laws, but the action, the modifi- cations, the changes of each should be accompanied by cor- respondiiig associated changes in its correlative. Since the changes of the one are motions in time and space, and the changes of the other are feelings which arise in time and consciousness, they may be but the two sides of one and the same changes. But the feelings are not motions. They do not, therefore, come properly into the present chapter of discussion. WHAT IS MOTION? 39 All physical correlative terms are held to be, when com- prehensively apprehended, fixed in amounts as changeless quantities. They are, other things equal, real invariants in extensions, motions, and methods ; in their sum of internal properties and modifications ; in their sum of active and static energies. If correlativity means anything fundamental in the economy of the universe, it must apply to the executive side of things ; it must govern the working methods, the times, places, and modes of changes, par Eminence ; it must establish a mathematics for all quantitative co- operations, and determine the exact equivalence between the different modes in every process. Where the changes are qualitative the correlations themselves may be differ- entiated in kind ; but for the present we are concerned only with quantities and their modes, with motion and its methods. To define motion to be simply change of place, is to define it in very much the same sense in which a child might define color and form to be exclusively in the object. It is defining the reaction, not the joint action and re- action, which are one and inseparable both as cause and effect. We still speak of seeing visible motion, as though such perceptions were exclusively objective ; though it can be shown to be as certain that the mind and its organism add the apparent oneness and solidity to the motion, as they do to the form which moves. A non-relative change, if such changes can arise, might belong to the Absolute, but not to this universe where everything is relative. It follows that even the primary units of motion — the ultimate atoms of matter which per- manently persist — in some way presumably must be com- posed of, or constituted by the co-operation of exclusively correlative changes. In other words, every part of every motion must be at least two-phased ; each phase arising 40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. and progressing with definite modifications in time and space because of inseparable dependence upon its active correlative. A correlation which produces any given motion may be either transient or permanent ; but every ultimate unit of motion which enters into the larger, composite whole, must act its part by virtue of its own indivisible terms. Its inherent correlativity cojistitutes its unity, its indivisibility except through its own destruction. This, in brief, is the motion theory of matter which the present paper endeavors to state fully and definitely ; to illustrate in its practical assumed aspects by the aid of diagrams ; and to apply with considerable detail in explanation of many of the various phenomena of nature. Newtonian laws of motion are regarded as especially the laws of translation, plain and rotary. Satisfactory in practice, they are justified in theory only by the third law — that motion involves both action and reaction. Rest, inaction, may exist as between one system of motion and another ; but in any motion considered by itself, if motion is innately related change, there can be no actual or rela- tive rest ; yet there must be a pivotal position about which the opposed terms hold each other in perpetual balance. This means that in every motion there is at once antagonized movement and a resulting stress — which together establish their common centre of equipoise or gravity. Whenever that centre of correlated motions remains stationary relatively to their changes, the changes — of constructive necessity — must be rhythmic in kind — repeat- ing themselves in an endless succession of waves or pulses of a vibratory character. In the nature of the case, every such dependent system of changes, in continuous struc- tural equipoise both in time and space, must be a perpetual system. Influences from outside may modify its modes ; they can have no power to unsettle its inherent self-poise. WHAT IS MOTION > 41 Each of our hypothetic atoms is an abiding group of such equiHbrated vibrations. These are the units of motion. But wherever the centre of gravity continuously changes in position relatively to a progressive action and reaction, as in all translatory motion, there the motion is not rhythmic except in its repeated details, but is being con- tinuously more or less transformed in mode. No two oppositely directed energies, both acting in space and time, can commingle, yet not together set up a neutral point which becomes their momentary centre of gravity, but their reciprocal relations may be gradually modified by the withdrawal of some energies and the incoming of others. By these means the present form or mode of every motion is of necessity decided for each constituent by the present modes of its associates, and vice versa. The result is frequent transformation in the modes of the process as a whole. The energy which each term of a relation brings into exercise is exclusively its own ; is its essential force. Motion is the composite, present modifi- cation of a process related in time and space, which, because of the inherent relativity of its character, can arise only through equal but variously modified action and reaction. The most fundamental conceptions of motion, and all adequate definitions of it, should include equally in both correlated terms the joint conception of moving and of being moved. In every line of movement there is both acting and being acted upon throughout. Doubtless power, energy, may exist and act without pro- ducing motion, but motion can arise only through modes of energy differentiated in related time and space. Every motion represents a definite amount of energy commonly estimated in but one direction. The principle of the lever, in which a long arm and light weight counterbalance a short arm and heavy weight, repeats itself in all processes : in every complex motion ; 42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. in every stress, which is the joint pressure of opposed motions ; in every structure, which is an aggregation of co-operative motions and stresses ; in static conditions with their apparent equiHbrium of rest ; and even in the almost purely dynamic radiation of energy. Does the action of correlativity fairly enter into the most authoritative definitions of motion? It seems to be ignored in Newton's first and masked in his second law. More modern authorities appear to consider the fact of relativity in motion vaguely and often remotely — rarely bringing it to the front as the ever present cause in every process. Many physical terms still embody the cruder, earlier conceptions. Current phrases, if not hopelessly misleading, are calculated to foster the less discriminating earlier opinions, in the same way that frequent reference to positive and negative electricities tends to uphold out- grown electrical theories — despite the accompanying statements which discredit them. Visible bodies and their obvious changes in form and location, stubbornly put themselves forward as the legitimate types of motion in general — hence of motion as something entirely distinct in kind from the something moved. But beyond this, there seems to be a survival in some of the most scientific minds, and in their later theories, of the discredited doctrine that motion is a more active something which can be impressed upon a less active if not an inert substance called matter — called in its less compounded stages an atom, a molecule. Thus the kinetic theory of gases endows minute particles with a translatory, right-line progress ; it endows them with this right-line motion, which does not appear to be wholly a response to reciprocal motion. Even vortex atoms, vortex tubes, and gyratory whirls generally, seem to be the product of a foreign communication to portions of a fluid-ether, the communicated energy being different in WHAT IS MOTION? 43 kind from the prior fluid attributes. The gyrations and the ether, both relative, are yet differentiated, not as unlike modes merely, but as unlike classes of things — still spoken of genetically as two, not as one. If any theory can be established which will interpret Nature's methods to be all of one type, but of many modifications, this is much to be desired ! Newton's straight-line course, which all bodies once started would continue to follow if not interfered with from without, Maxwell's right-line progression of mole- cules, and Thomson's endless vortices, to my apprehen- sion, all alike fail in providing for an absolute reciprocity in every form of motion. Translated structures, if them- selves but clusters of co-operative motions of greater and less co-operative permanence, from the very nature of such an aggregation, must be primarily composed of harmonic or rhythmic motions of some sort. Then, is it presumable, is it conceivable, that any group of vibratory changes, if suddenly thrust forward in space by a foreign translatory impulse, would not continually tend to absorb and retrans- form this obviously secondary and derived mode of motion not closely akin in mode to the primary rhythms? Every translation except that of planetary revolution — in some way continually reinforced — is gradually trans- formed, and, as a translation, is brought to an end. We attribute this result wholly to outside friction and to gravitation — working always in obvious connection with the internal reactions. But who can prove that internal actions and reactions do not also begin at once to trans- form the received translatory mode? Provided every action between any two bodies is in the nature of a stress, — and the highest authorities concede that it is — then just in so far as that stress ceases, the resulting translation must cease. Many new elements continually enter into every pro- longed visible motion. According to the new theory, 44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. the ongoing of a stone tossed from the hand is as really effected by many complex copartnerships — some of the partners going out and others coming in at every stage of the progress — as a planetary progress is a continuous loss and renewal of minor energies through the continual main- tenance of an endless, large reciprocity which involves vari- able reciprocity. A contact of motion with motion, entirely without fric- tion and resulting stress — especially when there is some opposition in the direction of the motions — is not to be thought of. But a small friction is a small stress or ten- sion ; and tensions in sufficient aggregation become visible masses. Tensions are mutually obstructed motions ; and the various obstructions are certainly adequate to produce all the effects of a manifold differentiated rigidity. Thus tensions in different juxtapositions can produce tangible, real masses, with all the known phenomena of resistances and apparent solidity. In the nature of things, all true correlatives are at once cause and effect. The correlative terms of every motion are active elements co-operating because of a constitu- tional necessity inherent in all actual correlates. There is nothing arbitrary apparent in any natural process. The processes are all products of reciprocal changes — as inevi- table as the rise of one scale of a balance while the other falls and its fall when the other rises ; as inevitable as the enlarging of the third angle in a triangle when the other two angles are diminished and its diminution when they are increased. Modification arises only through equiva- lent modification of all correlatives. An atom composed of correlated vibrations may be moved on as a whole from the outside — ^though not with- out some reciprocal action on its part ; — but its own rhythmic changes in time and space — internally initiated, correlatively necessitated and modifiable only in mutual dependence — must be movements, not of the atom as a.' WHAT IS MOTION! 45 whole, but distinctively the appropriate and differentiated nvaveme-Hts of its severalparts. Their numerous modifi- cations, produced through foreign action, can arise only in exact internal equivalence and in exact accord with all innate structural conditions. Such an atom would be self-sufficing whether vibrating in isolation or in copartnership with other atoms. It would be self-moving in all of its parts, as many larger bodies are ; but not able to translate itself as a whole without help, as no larger bodies are. The transference from one position to another of a mass, or of any mode of energy, requires the co-opera- tion of several external reciprocating systems— systems which for the time co-operate upon the same principle of correlation as that which moves any two related terms exclusively within the atom. This unity of method can be best indicated in connection with practical applications of the rhythmic theory. The movement of masses is the motion of tensions. The extensiveness of motion as a total, and of any given motion measured by itself, must be the quantity of space actually occupied by the energy which that motion represents. The form of the motion varies, but not its amount ; then, as on our theory motion and matter are but two names for one reality, the extensiveness of matter — which because of its active operations we term motion — is Nature's unvarying constant. These changes called motion have taken active possession of certain amounts of space which they hold under all contingencies, against all intruders. In other words, matter or motion is the extensiveness of persisting force manifesting itself in the process of changing in forms and positions at definite rates. Its special modes at any given time are necessitated, are forced upon it by the interference of correlated motions, often oppositely directed, which tend to crowd themselves 46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. into the places in which it is moving. As it crowds back in return, a stress arises ; new forms and slightly changed places are assumed by both correlates. It is through such mutual interferences, modified in every conceivable way by differentiated action and composition of the cor- related terms, that all compound substances assume new properties and all bodies are constantly taking new places and configurations. It is this double-sided changing in form and position, with rates of change definitely related in time, which con- stitutes the motion out of which the physical universe is progressively built up into tangible bodies. The hypoth- esis postulates a changeless mass, in quantity, but not in modes. The modes are infinite in variety and endless in their procession. Evidently the translation of bodies, generally regarded as the distinctive type of all motion, can be but an ex- tremely composite, and, as currently interpreted, a very delusive aspect of highly compound motion. It is largely the subjective perception, with its non-discriminative sen- sations, which gives to it a unity, on the same principle that it supplies a deceptive unity to the continuous band of light made by a rapidly swaying firebrand. In the case of the ribbon of light from the moving brand, the child at first attaches his own sensations to the object. When he has seen the brand repeatedly both at rest and in motion, he knows that his first supposition will no longer answer, though he still may be unable to properly explain the related facts. The man will answer promptly : that because the motion is so rapid it gives one the impression of completely filling the whole space through which the light is moved. But tell the same man that the motion which he sees when a stone is sent flying through the air is in reality made up of billions of infinitesimal motions running both to and fro, but on the whole making rapid forward progress, and seeming to his unreasoned percep- WHAT IS MOTION? 47 tions to be but one simple ongoing because of the slow action of his physical senses, and he is entirely incredulous. Visible motion, like color, is both objective and subjective. If attention is turned to either term exclusively, the pre- sented phenomena, from that standpoint alone, may lead to the narrow, one-sided inference, either that the per- ceived motion is purely objective, or that it is purely subjective. The whole effect arises as a co-operation which includes subject, object, and all intervening co-workers in the com- plicated process established between them. Science has discovered that every physical co-operation is some form of stress set up by the joint action of the related terms. This means working relations between object and object, similar to those between subject and object in every act of sensation and perception — a relation in which an equal share of work is borne by each side simul- taneously. This precisely expresses our idea of the cor- relation essential between motion and motion under all conditions. The simplest and the most complicated co-operations are forever necessitated to work in a true and perpetual equilibrium of activities. The a priori probability is that the ultimate unit of indi- visible motion is a group of related modes which condition each other's modal changes, and, together, originate a successive rhythm of co-existent internal vibrations ; and that these, through inter-atomic co-operations, originate new modifications in the forms of the primary rhythm ; but with no change in the quantity of motion involved. The action through a definite space, determines a definite extension ; and as all such action is mutually limited, the extension, like the force, becomes a fixed quantity. Primitive or ultimate correlatives are inseparable ; the others are not, as a circle may or may not enclose a square or a triangle, but must have every part of its circumfer- ence equally distant from its centre. The circle, ideally 48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. conditioned by inseparable correlates, is a true permanent individual of its own type. The atom really conditioned by inseparable modes of real energies working in active correlation, is the permanent individual of its own real type. The circle and the atom alike may assume any number of secondary relationships, provided these are compatible with the primary ones ; but this non-funda- mental class of relations, unlike the primary ones, may be unmade as readily as they are made. In the case of the atom, these added correlations mean inter-atomic co-operation, or some variety of combination between atom and atom, with resulting modifications in the rhythm of both. Such unions are but the uniting of complex strands or cords of determinate motions which can be dissociated with equal readiness. But the rhythm of a primary strand is indestructible, except as involving the destruction of the applied principle of correlation by virtue of which it gained an existence. A circle, seconda- rily conditioned to circumscribe a square and a triangle, and to be itself inscribed in a larger square and a larger triangle, may have perfect adjustments among all of these non-essential relativities ; but circle, triangles, and squares must each keep intact the primary correlations because of which it gained its geometrical, specially distinctive character. So the atom, associated in inter-atomic partnerships, must keep intact the primal constitution because of which it persists as a complex but indivisible unity. Here divi- sion of correlates would mean return into the Absolute. Conditioned material ultimates, if they exist, comprise the physical totzS. of persisting reals. They are the true material individuals; their co-operations determine the character of all physical processes. It is conceded that everything exists and acts in definite relations to other things ; then we should expect that the guiding principles of correlation would be permanently realized within the ultimate units WHAT IS MOTION > 49 of being. There, if anywhere, should correlated energies remain co-operative. Our atom of matter, then, is a unit of motions with innate energy enough to achieve vastly more than has yet been required of it by physical evolution. Every portion of every vibration or wave motion, like every part in a wave-length of light, having oppositely directed energies, limited by corresponding energies act- ing in accurate opposition, each part to its direct correlate, by mutual interference would, together, produce check, strain, tension, to be the next instant re-transformed into active motion. The sum of the tensions and motions, as in the pendulum swing, would remain a definite quan- tity. Each semi-detached line of motion is like the path of a pendulum ; but in the place of the translated solid is the reversal of the wave-front in the to and fro current of a fluidity. To the average man a motion begins and ends. It arises from nothing and lapses into nothing ; it is a nothing. Science knows that every motion is the new form of some other mode. But will science admit that all motion is correlated, active co-operation ; that prima- rily motion is change in the forms of real but active ex- tensions ; and that change of place arises secondarily, and is a resultant of secondary correlations ? Fig. i may illus- trate in what way motion can be simply change of form in time and space, and a return upon itself. Motion originated wholly within the ultimate particle of matter can arise only in correlation with other changes within the same ultimate particle. These correlated mod- ifications are so jointly dependent that under all conditions even their slightest modes vary in exact correspondence — each a ratio of the other. All modifications resulting from inter-atomic copartnerships, if begun in any part of the primary atom, must directly modify the immediate correlates, and compel some corresponding adjustment in 50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. more remotely connected parts. In this way all motion, each point energizing for itself, is yet constrained, directed, modified — in brief, limited and conditioned in the manner of its changes by its correlatives. It follows that all motion is co-operation. Every phase of motion must be regarded in two aspects — that of action FIGS. 1-7 — DIAGRAMS OF RHYTHMIC ATOMS. Rhythmic atom midway in vibratory elongations and retraction. The arrows show the directions of wave-fronts. At return beats all directions are reversed. The figure illustrates supposed relations and movements in continued equilibrium. It does not assume to represent the actual motion- form of atoms. and that of reaction — the two phases blending, often indistinguishably, in one process. Also every phase of motion has many correlates, more and less remote in their influence. The total of motion is thus a complex of correlated changes jointly conditioned in space and time. WHAT IS MOTION? 51 All bodies, all physical phenomena, also arise in and through established active correlations. Inorganic and organic substances, as we know them, are the products of various inter-atomic co-operation. Every visible body is held, in its partial separateness and temporary individual- ity, by internal co-operations ; and its commerce with other bodies not itself is rhythmic co-operation between some of its not visible energetic vibrators and those of its responsive neighbors. Solids are largely groups of tensions, but all of them with much retained rhythmic action. But there never is, there never can be, continuous equality of modes in action and reaction ; else the op- posed equal forces would produce rest, not motion. Motion is modification, and is never identical with its own present mode at any two consecutive moments ; it is never converted into anything except other motion. Action and reaction are equal and opposed in each vibration as a whole ; but they are not equal in dynamic force at each moment of any vibration, or of any larger co-operation. From the structure, the innate constitution, of motion, there is a continuous transformation of free motion into tension or of tension into free motion. This is currently admitted to be the continuous process in all harmonic motion ; the rhythmic theory enlarges the statement by insisting that all motion, properly inter- preted, is harmonic motion. Each vibration is vibratory because of the continuous transformation from vis viva to potential force and back from potential force to vis viva, in an endless cycle ; then the compounding of two such harmonic cycles can only add more variety of modes to the compounded rhythm. Combining compound rhythms with other compound rhythms in many ways can only produce more and more numerous new modifications of rhythmic pulsation. If such pulsations cannot adjust themselves each to the 52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. other, they will not become compounded ; or, if they are but poorly adjusted, they will soon fall asunder and be- come dissociated, as the less stable compounds are con- tinually doing under the influence of outside helps and interferences. As two drops of water brought together must unite, each taking a somewhat changed form and place, but neither trenching upon the real extension of the other, so any two adapted motions must unite and become in effect but one co-operation, yet each, though changed in form, remains and acts entirely in and of itself. The theory in no sense abolishes form and size of very literal shapes and dimensions. On the contrary, every- thing has at every moment a real configuration of its own, of actual and unvarying dimensions, but the figure is never for any two consecutive instants exactly the same, because the figure is constantly re-created by, is made by an energetic process of change, of motion. As every motion must have direction, so there must be an actual space through which it moves, and this space must be of three dimensions — not only a length, but a breadth and a thickness. Then, as the motion is indestructible, go where it will, it carries its dimensions with itself, and it is only modified in form by the co-operation with some other equally active energy. Is it claimed that where, there^ is vsxo'd.ovi. something is moved ? We answer, certainly. Power, energy, is moved. Power is brought into special co-operative modes of exer- cise. 'Y\\.Q power is 7iot conditioned, but the methods of its use are conditioned in their forms and other modes of change. It is impossible to destroy form and its actual dimensions, as it is impossible to destroy the directed and correlated motion which constitutes the extension, and some form which it must take at each moment. Form is the abstract, as space is an abstract of extension in general. Visible forms are the spaces which apparently contain, WHAT IS MOTION t 53 which comprehend and include, not only the actual exten- sions at any given moment, but the accompanying spaces into which the vibratory motion penetrates with its suc- cession of changes, and any other outlying spaces which are but interstices into which other adapted substances might penetrate, and into which they demonstrably some- times do penetrate. It follows that form, in its objective point of view, is motion in active co-operation in a space which it apparently pre-empts and fills — partly as still energetic tensions, and in part as motion free to enter into other copartnerships — as with light, heat, and in some way indirectly with our own powers of perceiving. The same misapprehension arises as to the full nature of forms and substances, as we have seen to exist in regard to motion of the apparent solid, or of any so-called " visi- ble body." The form actual at one instant is " eked out " by the actual unlike forms produced by the motion at other moments. Thus the entire space in which these motions are in active correlated vibration seems to be a plenum, and entirely full of a visibly continuous substance. Again, this appearance is not a falsity ; it is only a too hasty conclusion, an untested assumption, which a wider knowledge will interpret far more comprehensively than the senses can interpret it ; but which, upon the plane of the senses alone, is as true to-day to the highest authority in science as it is to the child who is sure that he both sees and feels the solid form. He does see and touch something which is practically a continuity of solid form, of solid resistance. The child is justified in his clear and positive judgments. Nevertheless, with more light as to the internal structure of substances, his judgments must become so enlarged and modified, little wonder that with insufficient glimmers of a certainty of misjudgments, as judged by a wider knowledge, there arises the appalling dread, almost the certainty, that phenomenal Nature is all 54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. a bitter delusion, or at best nothing better than a beautiful and transient phantasmagoria. But wider knowledge may prove that Nature is no- where a cheat, yet is nowhere fully comprehended. It may prove that her facts are nowhere even distorted, requiring to be transfigured in the too narrow perceptions and judgments of her intelligent children. We are all groping onward together in a common twilight. We are in the doubtful twilight, but the morning twilight which grows penetratingly is herald of an ever more and more perfect day. And the visible form remains as truly a reality to-day as formerly — only it must be differently explained. When this form is visibly moved onward, the tensions are doubtless sent forward together, often without sepa- ration ; but that this is accomplished without internal reac- tions, changes of parts, is impracticable and not to be for a moment accepted by one who believes that all physical action is some mode of motion, and all motion some mode of a dependent co-operation in space and time, which involves, and in the nature of the case must involve, changes in forms and rates. How can any two ever- changing extensions be brought forcibly enough together to mutually push each other out of place without both becoming modified as to their preceding changes? Is it not evident that the ongoing of the one — the body moved, to which we give most attention — is a secondary result, a secondary mode of motion which, soon or late, must become re-transformed into primary rhythmic vibration ? Let us think of primary motion, then, as an endless intra-atomic changing in form, hence in rates of change. And because one motion is forever coming in contact with and so interfering with other motions, let us think of the compounded product as endless complex modifications of changes in forms and rates of change. Let us think of visible motion as a secondary product resulting from the WHAT IS MOTION-? 55 co-operations of the primary motions. And let us think of all motion as the interaction of the parts of the co- operative system, never as the translation of the system as a whole. Thus, all motion being the internal manifes- tations of its special motion system, all of the properties of every substance must be thought of as pure motions, which, in co-operation with our sensations, produce in us all sensible phenomena. That the subject may not seem too complicated to be realized, we propose to treat it in sections and in detail, and will only add here that no two or many motions can be brought into collision without in some way modifying each other. They must co-act for a longer or a shorter time, because they are kindred energies, and both unlim- itedly changeable through co-operation. THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. In the discussion of motion in general it seemed almost a necessity to refer frequently to the supposed unit of motion, the Rhythmic Atom ; and in treating more especially of the atom there must be return to the dis- cussion of principles already considered. The resulting repetitions are presented, however, in slightly varied aspects and may point towards new bearings of a com- plicated subject that in the manner of presentation is unfamiliar and hence must contend with many preposes- sions. Such repetitions may not be wholly undesirable. The reason for dealing so minutely and so much at length with the hypothetic atom itself, is b ecause to gain a clear conception of its supposed methods when vibrat- ing in isolation, will enable one the better to comprehend the supposed methods of combinations in the formation of substances, chemical and physical, and the explanation of all the other physical processes, as radiation, electrical phenomena, gravitation, etc. With our modes of interpreting data, every differentia- tion in material co-operations of any and of all kinds is made wholly dependent upon the amount and the kind of association, not between the atoms as wholes, but between those semi-detached parts of the atoms which we have termed the atomic vibrators. Motion is co- operation of parts — not directly of wholes, — though these also become more and less remotely involved, and hence 56 THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 57 modified in varying degrees. Even the translated body, for the time, is virtually in combination with the larger whole, which includes both its motion and the cause, force, or other motion which is the temporary correlative of its movements. Where the beginnings are comparatively simple, the results may be extremely complex and far-reaching. But the beginnings of all physical processes are held to be invariably co-operations among the vibrators, and when- ever energies — special modes of motion — are transmitted from place to place, the free and the measurably free vibrators are the common carriers. Hence the import- ance at the outset of thoroughly comprehending these A B C's of changes, without which not only the rhythmic atom itself would be meaningless, but the entire hypo- thetic structure of the Philosophy of Individuality would be of no account. But the vibrators are of no account except as, however imperfectly, they indicate primary correlated terms, point- ing towards the directed groups of motions which severally condition each other in one system, and to- gether constitute the equilibrated complex atomic rhythm of indivisible motion, the ultimate atom. This is the least system of persisting motion, and it enters as the stable brick into every substance ; but, like more pliable material, assumes innumerable shapes and can serve with an infinite variety of helpfulness, aided by its associates. Thus, though our represented atom is only a rough at- tempt at suggesting to the eye some primary possible co-operations which may be presumed to lie at the base of physical nature, yet the theory of conditioned co-oper- ation itself being fact and not fancy, the hypothec ated i^;iiYidiiii4— irmrhr nn •"ip"--'-i"<- aid in enabling us to comprehend the real individua]^'"as*well as to gain some rational conception of the structure of the larger masses which are somehow composed of working aggregates of 58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. those individualized if infinitesimal relative beings— the ultimate units of matter. Our rhythmic atom then is a relative whole composed of inseparable because of jointly conditioned^ vibrating parts which always, under all contingencies, maintain an internal complex equilibrium of atomic motions. In combination with other atoms — where motions have taken in part the form of tensions and an equivalent amount of free motion has been distributed elsewhere — the atomic equipoise, like that between atom and atom, may be rather static than dynamic. Translation of the atomic system as a whole is no part of its normal inter- nal rhythm. The least element of motion known to science is a Wave-length of light. This Wave-length is shown to be a product of correlation by a reversal of process — the two halves of the Wave seeming to be exact opposites. These are transverse Wavelets, acting across the line of propaga- tion. The transmitted ray of light is thus shown to be very highly complex. It may even be subdivided up to the limits of sensible experiment. With visible Wave-lengths as teachers, we infer that active correlation must govern every part of every ulti- mate atom — the same laws of correlation governing large and small. All harmonic motions are produced by oppo- sitely directed energizing, by counter forces simultaneously impelling in opposed directions. All rhythmic action means regulated action and reaction. Simultaneous changes of modes or of directions may arise in any cor- related parts provided the system's joint static and dynamic equipoise is correspondingly readjusted and remains continuously unbroken. So accurately is co-operation, intra-atomic and inter- atomic, adapted in time and space, that energy is held to be radiated and transmitted through space by travelling alternately with elongating and retracting vibrators — the THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 59 ether's helping and connecting atomic lines of active vibration in which tension seems to be at its minimun. Visible spectral lines cannot represent single vibrations ; if they did, a single atom of a substance might present its characteristic spectrum. The wave-length must be regarded as a group of transverse vibrations occupying their several defined amounts of extension, each in its own relative place. The limitations and reversals of motion in a wave-length of light make the theory of an equilibrated multiple rhyth- mic or harmonic activity — -co-operative about a common atomic centre — both comprehensible and justifiable as an atomic hypothesis. Under like conditions, all radiated energy travels at about a common rate. This fact can be best explained by assuming that, in the direction of propagation, the energy is transmitted from one vibrator to another- — mov- ing on alternately towards and from each atomic centre, through which it is passed by the assistance of the normal vibratory action. Atomic vibrations are assumed to have, like the ether, both direct and transverse wave-lengths. These vary in form with the co-operative conditions. They are also held to be to-and-fro motions of parts of a system ; but more analogous to fluid waves than to the swing of a pen- dulum — wave fronts of pure motion surging from the atomic centre to its outer bounds, then, reversed in direc- tion, surging back again — impelled and directed at all stages by constitutional correlations. The central or pivotal point of such a system of cor- related changes, though it must be spoken of as relatively at rest, is by no means a point of indifference. It is rather the node at which all motions are alternately directed, at which they meet, and from which they are redistributed — probably not always in the same manner or the same lines. As the atomic proportion of free 6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. motion to tension is highly variable and dependent upon external co-operations, its internal methods must vary accordingly— although the internal correlativities must be maintained and the rhythmic balance always in active operation. But as variable amounts of free motion may be received and transmitted, the differenced internal modifications are also probable. The atomic centre of rest, of gravitation, is a true resultant, precisely as it is in all larger systems ; from a simple molecule to a solar-system and probably to the total physical universe. The old modes of the meet- ing energies are interfered with by each other ; their equally opposed action momentarily becomes tension, then is freely redistributed elsewhere — always in accord- ance with rigid mechanical law. The rest is not a cessation from activity, but from ac- tual movement. It is the movelessness of well-matched wrestlers, who, straining every sinew, might yet be taken at some instant by a flash-camera in the poise of a move- less statue. It is cessation like that of the darkness which attends the meeting of adapted and opposed waves of light. The nodes in all kinds of vibratory processes, as in those of vibrating strings, of reflected and concentrated light, heat, and sound, are held to be of this order of bal- anced, antagonized, but carefully adjusted and co-opera- tive energies. We shall find reason to infer later that the axes of growth in all vegetation, because they are positions of established equilibration, are also the points from which new growths take their rise. We shall find that such nodes, or places where motion is in temporary equilibrium, are supposed to play a much more important part in organic than in inorganic structures. The atomic axis is a centre of motion equipoise — not of a dead but of a living equilibration which ever renews the rhythm of re-adapted activities. Barely stated as yet, THE RHYTHMIC A TOM. 6l the hypothesis of the rhythmic atom with its complex cor, relativity of parts may seem to be highly chimerical. It is only intended to be a most inadequate symbolic mode of suggesting related co-operations in the ultimate units of matter, of a kind which might evolve a universe like the existing one. The subject is so remote from every-day life and its methods, distinct ideas perhaps can be best conveyed in part through visible representations. A vibration of the kind indicated must be an elastic line of motion, continuous and indivisible, composed not of particles but perhaps of successive pulses, including transverse as well as forward motion — one stream of mo- tion composed of differentiated modes, making its way to and fro in a space of three dimensions. This stream must have length, width, and depth, infinitesimal as the whole is, and whatever its modifications in form, it can never vary its quantity. The infinitely small is not the impossible. The theory must be tested by its ability to explain phenomena of all kinds on one and the same principle of correlation. Suppose each recurring vibration to be something like the outflow and reversal of an electric current, except that an electric current flows through or along a foreign con- ductor, but atomic currents flow only through definite spaces in definite times, because, being internally composed of oppositely directed correlative impulses, their vibratory action arises wholly as ever-recurring modifications of the complex atomic whole. As already noted, any two meeting motions must establish a common centre of equilibrium or gravity. An atom of many correlated motions must also establish such a centre — its axis of motion, symmetry, and equilibrium — a neutral point around which the opposed motions oscillate. In the diagrams an atom is drawn with only four vibra- tory lines for the sake of simplicity, and because the 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. supposed correlations can be sufficiently illustrated by that number of vibrators. The transverse wavelets are not given. The dotted circle within which the figure of the hypo- thetic atom is represented is supposed to indicate the boundary to which vibration would elongate if normally caused by internal correlations alone. The dotted lines extending outside of the circle mark out a possible pro- longation of the vibrations in response to dynamic forces co-operating from without the atom. Any communicated energy, as heat, by overcoming the internal stress of a vibration and transforming it into active motion, may prolong the extension of the vibration indefinitely. Con- versely, anything which will increase the tension of a vibration must diminish its length, but only through a corresponding increase in breadth and thickness. The real dimensions of every primary vibration remain unchanged. Each vibration is supposed to be itself composed of oppositely directed changes ; the arrows show which way the wave-fronts of each portion of every vibration are supposed to face at the particular stage of the cycle of changes indicated. In Figs. 2, 3, 4, and 5, a straight-line rhythmic atom is represented as it would vibrate if isolated from all out- side co-operation. The dark lines, plain and broken, are supposed to govern the dominant direction of the com- plex action as a whole— the red lines heading the opposite way ; but all directions are simultaneously reversed during the return beat of the vibratory period. Thus a composition of several co-operative elements, facing in different ways, produces each of the four com- paratively distinct primary lines of recurrent rhythmic action. There is continuous to-and-fro motion along each line, which is called an atomic vibrator. The several vibrators in correlation constitute the indivisible atom. THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 63 One elongation and one retraction constitute a vibratory period ; but two differentiated groups of vibrators, the A and the B groups, differ in period by a half beat. This difference arises from the nature of their respective corre- •Y IB / v* X' A .^VW-f- /f-n' -h .M. X ■|B' •V' Rhythmic atom half-way in direct phases, /n + = increasing elongation. m — = decreasing elongation. m° — reversal position. lations, adjusted in the interest of a perpetual moving equilibrium of the atomic system as a whole. Dotted lines point out the unoccupied paths at the moment represented, but along which the vibrators must move at some time during each complete vibratory cycle. 64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. In Fig. 2 vibrators O A, O A' are elongating, and vibrators O B, O B' are retracting— the action of the A group facing outwards and that of the B facing centre- wards. The two groups dififer in phase by exactly a half beat— the condition represented being midway in both phases— when an atom of this type must have the form :Y ll/yyi/' + ii -....\A X :B' FIG. 3. Rhythmic atom half-way in reverse phases. of a Greek cross — given both in Figs. 2 and 3. In Fig. 3 the action is exactly the reverse of Fig. 2, the A group now facing centrewards and the B group elongating. In Fig. 4, O A and O A' are f elongated, but OB, B' | retracted. The reverse of this stage would represent the longer lines as vertical and the shorter ones horizontal. THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 65 In Fig. 5, O A, O A' are at normal elongation ; but O B, O B' are retracted and represented by curves meeting at the atomic axis. At this stage, when the reversal of all directions is to begin, the atom is, in form, little more than a threefold line of given length, breadth, and thick- ness. In reverse phases the line would be vertical. :Y ";/>rv - X' A • ^-H ^ Q j ^ ^- H -A X ■y' FIG. 4. Rhythmic atom. Horizontal vibrations two-thirds elongated ; perpendiculars two-thirds retracted. It appears that virtual symmetry is maintained in all possible phases ; and that the centre of gravity — that is, of equipoised energy — must remain unchanged during every stage of this cycle of harmonic changes. The configuration of any system of correlated motions which repeat themselves in rhythmic periods, must be a 66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. perpetual rhythmic change of form. Outside co-opera- tions may greatly modify that form, but they cannot destroy the innate symmetry of figure unless they can destroy the inherent equipoise through which it arises. If attention is given to that aspect of the subject, it will appear that atoms everywhere work in a domain of virtual t!:::i x: ■XL^^g^...=^,..rr!njA . . X FIG. 5. Rhythmic atom. Horizontal vibrations elongated ; perpendiculars retracted. equipoise, and that every molecular centre of gravity is a centre of actual though not always of ostentatious symmetry. Figures 6 and 7 represent an atom whose vibrations move along curved paths. There is very considerable evidence that some atoms do have a normal vibratory THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 67 curvature ; and that in some modifications resulting from atomic co-operations the lines of force naturally become curved and often tend to return upon themselves along curved paths, as in magnetic and electrical phenomena. To these varieties of composite curvature we shall return at a later stage of the discussion. /Y R. * • * - * *• • • * • •• • •• \/yy\f * •• %• '^:-\ A': \ . ^ • • «— ^ X / . 3' I ♦ Y* FIG. 6. Rhythmic atoms, with curved vibrations midway in direct phases. Here it is only needful to indicate that whether a system has curved or straight vibratory paths is of no importance, provided a balanced reciprocal action be maintained in every part, and the form of the atom will readily lend itself to inter-atomic combinations, to trans- lation, or to rotary motion about its own axis. 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. Vibration of any kind must imply tension at work in connection with vibratory motion. Primary vibrators were likened to the successive outflow and inflow of action from and towards a fixed point; perhaps the motion as a whole would be best indicated by the alter- nate stretching and retracting of an extremely elastic sub- • Y J • /nn,o fB^ .••' • B * • Y-- FIG. 7. Rhythmic atom, with curved vibrations. One group elongated, the other retracted. stance. A piece of caoutchouc, so formed that when its horizontal arms are stretched its vertical arms must retract, and vice versa, would be a not bad model of the Greek-cross atom ; but with the vital difference — that the model must always be stretched, elongated, from with- out, while all atomic vibrators elongate and retract from THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 69 within — each phase impelling and compelling its correla- tives and together maintaining the endless co-operation of tense inherent energizing. But if oppositely directed motions are made to hinder each other's progress by producing commensurate tension, there must be lateral interference. We may postulate pulses of opposed directions so adjusted in form, place and time as to become recurring mutual co-operative checks. Such lines of flow might produce, by their com- plex opposition, rotary movements repeated in transverse wavelets along the greater wave of elongation and retraction — lateral action comparable to the swaying action running along a tense vibrating chord. The tense- ness and the chord also fairly represent an elongated vibration. Whatever the lateral mode may be, interference there must be of some kind where free motion becomes trans- formed into tension. But the differenced vibrators of the system should also be interdependent. Motion along the red line of O A, in the several diagrams, is supposed to continue along the red line of O B ; that in the solid dark lines of O A, into corresponding dark lines of O B — all without radical change of direction. In a parallel way, the directed motion in the red lines of O A' continues along the red lines of O B' ; and that in the dark lines of O A' along dark lines of O B'. Travelling energy may also flow from one homologous vibrator to another of an opposite phase. Thus A and B vibrators are complementaries, and in some aspects are but the two halves of one harmonic motion, whose length, under normal conditions, is the distance from the centre of the atom to its circumference. But the motions in the homologous broken lines, repre- sented in retraction by the small semicircular curves, are supposed under some conditions to clash at the atomic centre like oppositely directed wave-crests, mutually re- 70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDTVIDUALITY. pelling each other at the instant in which all the vibrations are reversed in direction— thus adding their impetus to the reversal. In each elongating vibration the dynamic energy is being continually transformed into tension, with its result- ing rigidity, through the mutual hindrance to motion produced by the interference of oppositely directed energies in the different elements of the same vibrator, until, at the moment of general reversal, the " dynamic " and the "static " modes are in exact balance, and reversal begins by the help of other correlated factors. Tension being the check and stress produced by motions opposing each other in direction, these antagonized forces, like equally pitted wrestlers, hold each other in the mutual strain of apparent rest but of real unabated action. Their influence upon outside forces, unless in the guise of inertia, resistance to release, and gravitative pull, is little more than zero. All harmonic motion, as before stated, necessitates the conversion of dynamic into static — the tension-producing — modes of force ; or of the static modes into the dy- namic, in unending repetition. Persisting tensions, which arise from the compounding of oppositely directed united vibrations (chemical combinations), are complex strains in which motion is about equally impeded in both elonga- tions and retractions. Presumably motion is not entirely arrested, but so much hindered and modified that to out- side co-operations it seems little more than a passive iner- tia. Tensions are " potential forces " ; their conversion into released motion is potential force becoming again dynamic. Both modes are purely motion ; but to avoid circumlocution the most interfering modes are designated tensions, and the less interfering motions or free motions. Neither is wholly bound and neither wholly free. The terms only express different degrees of freedom. In the elongation of a primary vibration, the farther THE RHYTHMIC A TOM. 7 1 the wave-front moves onward from the atomic centre, the less will be the ratio of the free motion to the tension ; the less dynamic action, as a push or a blow, can it exert upon any outside object. On the contrary, in the retrac- tion of a primary vibration towards its atomic centre, the quantity of free motion increases at the same rate at which it diminished during the outflow. In this momentous structural, universal fact of the alternate conversion of vis viva into vis inertia and of vis inertia into vis viva in every primary vibration of the ultimate atoms, and hence also in every compound struc- ture, we find the key to all co-operative modes with their marvellously differenced results. With this key we should be able to unlock all processes, even the most complicated. Action and reaction accompanied by movement in either term, in the nature of the case, cannot be accu- rately equal in modes at any instant. If precisely equal at any point in space, of necessity actual motion would be suspended, and here would be an instance of absolute rest. It is because in all co-operations whatever, motion and tension are being constantly transformed the one into the other that action and reaction are equal and opposed only when we add together both the motion and the ten- sion and consider the sum of these two modes of the one equal the sum of the two modes of the other. In that sense they are always in exact balance. But the free motion between action and reaction must be continuously unequal except when, the co-operation being rhythmic in kind, at the instant of reversal both the opposed motions and the opposed tensions should be in exact balance ; hence the need of other correlations to prevent the deadlock of absolute rest. This is as true in the mass as in the atom. It follows that, in vibratory elongations, the free motion at any given position must be in an inverse ratio to some power of the distance from the atomic axis. This funda- 72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. mental structural necessity must be universal, admitting of no exceptions under any circumstances. Whether the action and the reaction arise within one complex vibration or arise within any compound system whatever, the same law of inverse distance from the common centre of gravity must be continuously operative. A heavy pendulum will give a decided push to any ob- stacle when just past its lowest point of vibration. At its outer limit it can give no push whatever, and at every point between, its motive force must be estimated accord- ing to the law of inverse distance from its centre of motion. This centre is a fulcrum constituted by opposed motions, the point from which they mutually help each other both to approach and to recede. In the rhythmic atom this fulcrum is stable, because the motions and ten- sions upon all sides are kept in perfect balance through perpetual readjustment between the static and the dy- namic modes. Every motion in this way finds its point of application in its neighbor, from which point it can push on towards its own goal, while in the same act its neighbor is oppositely impelled — both through this double- phased relativity helping and being helped unceasingly during the entire course of every process. Our Greek-cross atom, with its homologous arms elon- gating during the half period in which the other pair retract, and retracting as they elongate, in ceaseless rhythm, may seem a too complicated device to be the ultimate unit of motion. Perhaps a less complex unit may be possible — a single line of oppositely directed mo- tions with their rhythmic transformations of free motions into tension and tension into free motion. The existence or non-existence of this simpler atom has no actual impor- tance as bearing upon the constitutional correlativity of the actual ultimate, constituted by two ultimate terms whose destruction must mean destruction of the relative and return to the undifferentiated absolute. THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 73 Is it asked : What gain is expected to arise in particular from an atom of rhythmic internal motion ? It has all the advantages in the explanation of phenom- ena which either the elastic solid atom or the unextended dynamic atom or the vortex-motion atom possesses over each of the others. Added to this, it can credibly account for many hitherto unexplained phenomena. Given per- sisting systems of efficient co-operations, whose related motions and extensions are fixed and invariable in quan- tities, but unlimitedly variable in modes arising from orderly outside co-operations — all changes produced by exact correlations in time and space — could a universe as widely differentiated as this one fail to be duly evolved ? Briefly, then, ultimate atoms of correlated internal motion, such as have been roughly indicated, can be made to interpret the most widely differentiated phenomena, all of them alike the results of purely mechanical inter- atomic co-operations. Tensions can be shown to arise from oppositely directed, mutually inhibitory motions, and tension, as we use the term, is very nearly synonymous with the ordinary term — matter. It is tensions alone which become visible, which form the sensible bodies with their felt, so-called passive, resistances. It is the translation of tensions and their visible motions that has originated the current conception of motion, which is that of a something moved on in space by outside force ; but such motion is as much a product of correlated action as any other. The product of mass into motion is an available measure of energy ; but attention has been less directed to the initiative cause than to the reacting effect, the body visibly cleaving its appointed way onward. While the two co-acting terms are in contact the mutual action between them is the virtual co-operation between parts of one and the same system. After they have separated, each is still surrounded by a medium with which it continues in close co-operation. The results to 74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. the moving body are friction and consequent retardation and the downward pull of gravitation. But the body itself, being a complex of tensions, it seems inevitable that there must always be, in addition, an internal ten- dency to transform the translatory motion into a greater molecular freedom, into decreased tension and increased internal motion. If the translation is arrested by col- lision, there is immediate conversion into heat. With no collision, with no outside friction, if such a condition could obtain, who can prove that any compound sub- stance would continue to move onward without finally becoming dissociated through the gradual conversion of the translatory motion into greater molecular dynamic action ? There are many facts and analogies leading to the conclusion that there is always an organic tendency to reconvert all molar motion into its primary dynamic elements. The conception of an unrelated motion, such as that of a body flying alone through void space, is untenable if all modes of motion both begin and end in correlation, with its double-sidedness of continuous action. Translatory motion, therefore, can only be a temporary mode ; we may almost affirm it to be an abnormal type of motion, and it certainly is not at all the one typical affection of matter which it is so generally held to be. The place of visible motion in the kingdom of dynamics must be immensely secondary in the total sum of practical results. No uni- verse could exist in which there was any tendency to an unrelated ongoing in space ; and since the world does hold together, the motion of its primary elements presumably must be motion that returns upon itself, be- cause held always within bounds by correlated motion. But the tensions which lock each other into general practical inaction are yet in active communication of some kind with their environment. They absorb, transmit, or reflect light and heat ; they act chemically upon their THE RHYTHMIC ATOM. 75 surfaces ; if not conductors they may receive the surface- charge of electricity, and in many other ways there are evidences of active surface co-operation with the environ- ment ; it is beheved that a trailing residue of energy is left slightly behind when they are in rapid motion ; this has been accounted for as the ether adhering to the denser substance. This " bound ether " and a free ether have been generally called in to mediate between all sensible masses, to produce electrical phenomena, and even to do service as electricity itself. The denser particles have been enveloped in it in the guise of special and private atmospheres ; ether cushions, serving to prevent the col- lision of the harder solids and to regulate repulsions and attractions of atoms, molecules, and larger masses. There has been an invisible field of force of some kind hypothetically thrown around more solid matter in every attempt at an explanation of the working methods of Nature. The obvious facts have always required this, and they still continue to require it. The rhythmic atom, with its outreaching vibrators, a portion of which may become condensed into tensions with dissipation of free motion, but other portions of which remain uncombined, out-raying freely and forcibly from the visible surfaces, though themselves invisible ; and pulsing to and fro like active cilia, surrounding every compound particle with a fringe of energy, which is yet a literal part and parcel of itself, is another method of interpreting co-operation between tensions whose own energizing is exerted in a condition of tense mutual strain, alternating in reversed directions, and so little recognized by the senses that we constantly think and speak of all solid masses as passive, inert, as something not active, but to be acted upon. But the outlying, still comparatively free surface vibra- tors, which produce the thickening upon all fluids called the surface " skin," and which weave a corresponding 76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. thickening upon all surfaces which are not disintegrating and which so variously co-operate with the surrounding medium, have the important advantage of being legitimate portions of the rhythmic particles themselves. They are also in an active, intimate correlation among themselves and with the tensions to which they inseparably pertain. No foreign intervention, with such an hypothesis, is need- ful or desirable. MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. If we assume, as we do, that matter is literally com- posed of aggregated and co-operative modes of motion, of course we are bound to indicate distinctly in what sev- eral ways these motions are supposed to come together and to mutually modify each other to such an extent that they become the familiar fluids and solids of our acquaint- ance. The present chapter is an attempt to point out the various probable methods of atomic and molecular interaction. If isolated single lines of correlated motion could co- operate and persist independent of each other ; yet, pro- vided their central axes were brought together, they might unite in one and the same line, or if acting at right angles, form the Greek-cross atom or some of its possible modifications. Uniting in the same way, several Greek- cross atoms would, unless separated from without, co-op- erate thereafter, vibrating in different planes. It is needful to insist only upon the working correlation of all motion and some form of co-operation whenever two or more motions come in contact. Several atoms might become one group of many vibrations beating in and out from the same centre of gravity. They could vibrate in all planes and directions possible in a space of three dimensions, so long as among them they continuously maintained the system's moving equipoise. The question whether in a physical point of view the so-called chemical elements are or are not ultimate atoms. 78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. need not concern the present inquiry. Hypothetically they are all constituted in accordance with the rhythmic principle of correlated motions, in which tensions and free motions are forever being converted each into the other in an unending rhythm of harmonic changes. Obviously much differentiated in details, the vibratory processes of each class seem only to require certain distinct portions of a three-dimension space, and the different elements do not take possession of the same portions, so that any area may be filled over and over with different elements, each finding as much room for its legitimate pulsations as though its kind were the sole and only occupants. These facts accord well with the rhythmic hypothesis. The apparently indivisible particles with which chemists concern themselves are practically permanent units. By the hypothesis each system is composed of semi-detached vibrators — probably differing among themselves in modes of elongation with accompanying transverse oscillations ; differing in periods and rates of movement, and in degrees of mutually dependent correlativity. Every system, under like conditions, is sensibly like all of its own class. Every system is constituted one system by its internal correlations. These correlatives are either ulti- mate and indivisible, or they continue in co-operation while they are subjected to only such contingencies as science at present can modify and control. Given these rhythmic units, each a group of pulsating lines of force, along each of whose paths dynamic and potential modes forever undergo ultimate transformations, can existing Nature be fairly shown to have probably arisen as the product of variously modified copartnerships among such abiding systems ? Atoms of this character are Faraday's centres of force ■ with added and active determinate extensiveness — a con- stant which decides the actually occupied amount of atomic space whatever the temporary configuration. The MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 79 apparent space appropriated depends largely upon the ratio of the static to the dynamic modes. The centre and its force is a constant. All physical changes are concerned with form and mo- mentum, but there are innumerable varieties of modifica- tions. The normal rhythm of vibrators has been largely converted into tensions with their apparent rigidity of mass, producing solids, and, where the tensions are less in proportion, liquids. These tensions arise through mutual active interference, generally between oppositely directed energies. Vibrators of the same class, but pertaining to different systems, tend to elongate towards each other along the same paths, hence the end-to-end clash of homologous gaseous elements with their resulting repul- sions. But the same or other like vibrators meeting side to side must draw their atomic centres towards each other, hence the phenomena of so-called attractions. The possible unlike results are endless. End-to-end collisions between but partly elongated vibrators would be more forceful than collisions between the same vibrators when they have nearly or quite com- pleted their outgoing phases. Hence the crowding of like particles would correspondingly increase their ap- parent repulsion — in other words, would determine the laws of pressure upon the sides of the containing vessel. Or, if a free outlet be afforded for the translation of par- ticles, they are pushed out into surrounding space with a force and at a rate of progression proportionate to the crowding of like particles within. If nothing can trans- late itself, it must be helped, as we are helped in walking or in jumping from a spring-board ; every action must have its fulcrum of reaction. That diffusion of gases proceeds at slower rates than would result without interferences is well known. Smooth, rounded solids could but little retard or speed each other ; harmonic vibrations, with their inherent energy but inevi- 80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. table entanglements, explain the actual facts more simply and more clearly than can be done by any scheme of inert particles and alien atmospheres of active energies, or any scheme involving the impossible self-translation of atoms and molecules. Ultimate differentiated systems of inseparable harmonic vibrations, restricted to their own vibratory paths in re- lated equilibrium, because in all phases and under all modifications mathematically balancing each other around their fulcrum of motion, enable unlike particles, simple or compound, having different lines of motion, to take unoc- cupied places in the unfilled space which must be to them as a vacuum. Other related lines of tension and motion may thus establish themselves in a limited space, each equal network of vibrations exerting an equal pressure upon the sides of the containing vessel. The law of equal pressure from every gas which fills its adapted portion of space indicates that the mutual push, the free motion or dynamic energy of each, under like con- ditions, remains the same in quantity whether the gas be a simple or a compound substance. The compound in some way establishes a new tension in which the uniting motions engage, helping to neutralize each other so far as energetic outside co-operation is concerned. But the newly formed tensions seem to become a dead weight, an actual weight or resistance to be carried about by the correlated free motion. Whatever outside co-operations they may have, are in the nature of tensions to be over- come — not of free motion whose function is to overcome ; to move, not to remain. It follows that the free vibrations of all gaseous sub- stances, other things equal, have equal vibratory elonga- tions with equal repulsive force at like distances from their respective centres of gravity ; hence an equal number of molecules of all substances having the gaseous form can find room, under equal conditions, in any square inch of MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 8 1 space. And the rates at which the various gases diffuse themselves are precisely the rates at which equal amounts of free motion can engineer their unequal amounts of weight — that is, of tension with its established internal and external co-operations. But by what methods may tension be supposed to result from compounded, oppositely directed motions ? In all atoms alternate vibrations being supposed to differ by a half beat — all homologous vibrators elongating during the half period in which their complementaries retract, — it becomes evident that any two atoms constructed on this plan could unite to form one molecule by either of two modes — by the union of two homologous vibrators, or by the union of any vibrator with its complementary. Still more important must be the consideration as to whether the combined elements move simultaneously in the same or in opposite directions. As both are vibratory energies with complex factors, unequal in kind and amounts, two vibratory lines may unite either along their whole length or only partially at or near their extremities, and combinations generally alike may give very different results. Whether the combining vibrators are homologous, or complementaries, can be of but little moment. The im- portant point is : Do their wave-fronts move in the same or in opposite directions ? If they move together, free motion may increase and cannot greatly diminish ; if not, tension must be the result. Much depends also upon the manner of their union. To become compound or to combine operations, means nothing more nor less than to enter into vibratory co-operation — sometimes in a common direction of activities, sometimes in opposed directions ; sometimes with and sometimes without mutual changes of vibratory paths ; sometimes with increase of tensions and dissipation of free motion, sometimes with an increase of free motion and the lessening of tensions. 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. The two co-operative methods are distinctly opposed and contrasted, viz.: {a) The method in which the wave-fronts of the uniting vibrators move simultaneously in the same directions. (b) The method in which the wave-fronts of the uniting vibrators move simultaneously in opposed directions. In the {a) compounds, of which there are several possible varieties, the result in general is an increased (and in no case of this class is it more than a slightly diminished), proportion of the dynamic to the static modes over the normal — the sum of the two being under all conditions an unvarying quantity. In the {V) compounds (which may vary as to amounts by which they unite with different partners and under different conditions, but apparently not as to typical method of compounding), the result in general, if not universally, is an increased proportion of the static to the dynamic modes over the normal. The two ways of com- pounding are often associated in the same mass, and they are both held to be aggregative or mass-forming. There are other modes of co-operation which tend to dissociation ; as when oppositely directed wavelets (direct or transverse) meet face to face — meet " end on '' — when coming from opposed or partially opposed direc- tions. In all such cases there is a necessary rebound or repulsion. The supposition is that all repulsions of all kinds are mechanical effects produced by this class of end- to-end collisions between opposed vibrations. The stress which arises in all co-operation can be best explained as action and reaction between the variously directed rhythms of the vibratory parts of the systems, simple and compound. No intervening medium is required ; and if phenomena can be equally well or better explained without the hypothesis of a disconnected'\\A-^v^g fluid, the interstellar ether may then take its place and do its own work as an atomic structure, fundamentally MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 83 constituted through correlations, essentially of the same type as those of more dense matter with its greater accumulation of tensions and equivalent loss of active mobility. Oppositely directed energies, when brought into contact, produce tension either temporary or permanent. In the nature of the case, each active opposing motion (repre- senting a real extension) tending to arrest the other in its ongoing action, there will arise mutual crowding back, with condensation along that line ; then, with the reversal of the vibrations, each pushing against the other, they will be driven apart or mutually repelled if the contact has been of a kind which will enable them to freely separate. Thus colliding sensible bodies, having non- sensible free vibrators which alternately elongate and retract, — the visible surfaces being their axes of movement — after the first compression, have an elastic or restitution force in the normal reversal of rhythmic phases. iV) But if oppositely directed vibrations are brought together side to side during the elongation or partial elon- gation of each, with such adaptations as will cause their transverse motions to interpenetrate, then, at their mutual retraction, condensation must arise along the main axis of motion, and in this case there can be no more than a very partial restitution so long as the united vibrators remain in contact, because each is but straining against the other in all directions. Two systems, uniting in this way by one or more vibrators of each system, become one com- pound system until they are again dissociated, which can be only effected through outside co-operation. This we hold to be the type of all {h) compounds, of all so-called chemical combinations, which, of obvious neces- sity, involve more or less modification of the vibratory character, with formation of tensions and dissipation of free motion — our interpretation of the nature of the change in sensible properties. All such compounds result 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. from the co-operation of homologous vibrators (those having the same vibratory phases). Oppositely directed combinations of complementary vibrators (those having opposed vibratory phases) per- taining to one and the same atom, generally effected by the abstraction of heat or by pressure, fairly account for the changes of state from gases to liquids with their attending physical modifications. (a) In ordinary physical compounding, interatomic complementaries of like direction in both phases, in com- mon time, can either co-operate end to end or side to side. Often there is very little change in sensible prop- erties. Such end-to-end unions of two like atoms ex- plain the character of elementary molecules, as well as of many other aggregations and segregations. Side-to-side unions of complementaries though more and less in amounts of co-operation with unlike substances and conditions, tend to increase dynamic action, free motion, and to decrease tensions, obstructed motion, as compared with chemical compounds of the same density. Colloids, which comprise so large a part of the organic kingdom, are supposed to be formed in this way, at least to a very considerable extent. They are the only substances in which or by means of which molecular vibrations become transformed into sensible, molar, or translatory motion, into visible and ongoing movement started within the mass itself independent of external aid, as in all protoplasm. All vibrations having the same period being homol- ogous, and those differing by the half beat their com- plementaries, if an A and a B vibration of like atoms can take hands at any stage of their respective periods, very little or no modification need result to either system. They must unite at or near their extremities and vibrate along the same line with a simultaneous reversal. In order to do this, the axes of the two atoms must approach MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 85 each other — that is, if each vibrates in a given circle, the two circles must overlap before an extending and a retract- ing vibration can be brought into contact. When two complementaries do unite under such condi- tions the resulting system is a physical molecule, as dis- tinguished from the more usual chemical molecule. It is the unit of elementary gases. FIGS. 8-16 — DIAGRAMS OF RHYTHMIC MOLECULES. ::Y 5Y : A X' •T r ■Y FIG. 8. Two-atom molecule united by complementary vibrations. Half-way in all phases. A physical compound. Type — the molecule of elementary gases. This class is represented by diagrams 8 and 9. The atoms in all of the following diagrams are of the Greek- cross pattern and lettered in the same way as those with their triple lines ; but a single line here indicates the whole vibration. The series of short curves are added to represent the accompanying transverse motion. 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. A compound of the physical kind requires a partial revolution of one or both atoms upon its axis in order to bring the complementary vibrators into the same line— the revolution to be caused by outside help, such as any small movement among the particles of a gas, with so much crowding as would bring the complementary vibrations into contact. If they unite end to end, both moving in B:Y FIG. 9. Two-atom molecule united by complementary vibrations. A, groups elongated ; B, groups retracted. A physical compound. Type — the molecule of elementary gases. the same direction, neither atom need undergo any modi- fication of vibratory changes. But the united vibrations, while holding each other, lose their chances of other co-operations, unless through transverse motion. Thus the nascent gases exhibit more executive power than the same gases after they have assumed the molecular state. Otherwise, the physi- cal properties remain the same as before they grouped MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 8/ themselves in pairs. This means that their vibrations all remain essentially unmodified throughout their entire cycle of changes, and the atomic configurations are un- modified. As the arrows indicate in Fig. 8, each vibration retains its own path and direction in the atom relatively to all the others, so that each vibration will be entirely normal in time and space although one of the systems has been XIA >B ..■••■•.. .>B k' V FIG. 10. Two atoms in position to unite by homologous vibrations. A, groups elongated ; B, groups retracted. A chemical compound. turned upon its axis. But as the vibrations are in mutual correlation, and have no known relations with space (space is only the symbol or convenient measure of their actual extensions), this change of position in the atom as a whole can have no significance in relation to physical properties. The relative position of the two atoms enables them without vibratory modifications to approach each other 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. closer than they otherwise could, to be helpful in increas- ing each other's stability, and to lessen the chances of end- on collisions, with their mutual repulsion. Hence, most elementary systems, instead of remaining isolated atoms, unite in pairs and become one molecule. The uniting vibrations face in the same direction, the one elongating, the other retracting. In Fig. 9, the A vibration has reached its outward bound and the B vibra- tion its inner limit. At this instant begins the reversal of both in direction, B elongating and A retracting. There is no interference between the two, but each, in turn, extends itself to the axis of its partner, then recedes to allow the other to pursue the same path but in the opposite direction. The associated vibrators pursue their ordinary cycles of change. The molecule as a whole has the configuration indicated. If the A groups were represented as retracted and the B groups elon- gated, the action between B and B' in both atoms would be indicated by solid lines, dotted lines taking the place of those now solid. The molecule would present the same form as in Fig. 8, with the difference in vibratory times and positions. The axes of both atoms would remain at rest, and the contact of the united vibra- tors would continue throughout the cycle of molecular changes. All compounding without a modification of the proper- ties of a substance — as in most adhesions and cohesions — belong to the class of physical compounds. There is little or no vibratory modification, because the co-operation is continued without mutual interference. Such compounds may be solid, fluid, or gaseous. If under given condi- tions a hydrogen atom requires one volume of space for its vibratory changes, the molecule of hydrogen and every other gaseous molecule requires two volumes under like conditions. But if two zigzag lines energizing either in like or in MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 89 Opposed directions should merely touch at the outermost points of each zigzag, these would repel each other and both lines be moved or tend to be moved farther apart ; as in the repulsion of electrical currents and in the repul- sions between parallel motions of any kind when brought near enough not exactly to coalesce and yet each meas- urably to influence the other. But chemical or homologous compounds belong to a radically different type of unions. In all of these there is modification of physical properties. Unless any two atoms could merge themselves in virtually one atom by a union of their central axes, by construction, their homol- ogous union must be the uniting of oppositely directed vibrators, which involves the transformation of free motion into tension through interference. If homologous vibrators could unite at their extremities when elongated, they must either separate on retraction or their axes would be drawn together and blended. If they could remain united without that result, both axes, being drawn to and fro with incredible speed, the proper- ties of the new compound would be as unlike those of both elements as can well be conceived. But as the con- tact of homologues end-on would be a clash with repul- sion, it is incredible that such a type of unions can become permanent. The apparently new substances, often with curiously original properties, produced by chemical compounding, must be explained as some com- position of oppositely directed vibratory action, and the varying degrees of modification can be satisfactorily explained. But should homologous vibrations unite side to side while fully or partially elongated, the axes of both systems would draw towards each other as the united vibrators began to retract in opposite directions ; the result being tension along the line of contact, which must hinder com- plete retraction and hold the atomic axes more or less 90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. apart. Free motion in both directions being arrested, would be distributed elsewhere; as sensible heat is evolved and distributed in chemical combinations, the tension remaining as its equivalent. The vibratory attempts to elongate must also act in opposed directions. Vibrators, having transverse interference, must hinder each other's elongations equally with their retractions, and such interference must involve more or less all near and X. ^ oon.0 ■"a Two-atom molecule united by homologous vibrations. A, groups re- tracted ; B, groups elongated. A chemical compound. remote correlatives. Hence every associated vibrator must have increase of tension, shortened elongations, and definite changes in rate, place, and form, though the periods of their respective vibrations would remain unchanged. By reference to the diagrams, the nature of the sup- posed various modifications — which correspond with the facts of chemical combination — will be apparent. Figs. MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 91 10 to 16 inclusive represent chemical molecules already formed or in positions to become combined. It will appear from Fig. 10, that, under ordinary condi- tions, before homologous vibrations can unite side to side, the axes of their respective atoms must be made to approach. If they are to unite along their whole length dis indicated by the diagrams, though merely for the sake of uniformity, the uniting vibrators must be elongated and :;Y ::T .;Y ""Y ?Y FIG. 12. Three atoms in position to form a chemical molecule. their atomic centres separated only by the length of one vibration at the moment of their union. This corresponds to the supposed distance of the atoms of a physical mole- cule, and the better to illustrate the different effects which must arise through physical and chemical compounding, the representations are all made on this plan. But it is not probable that two vibrators usually unite throughout their entire length. The more stable com- 92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. pounds may do this ; but the unstable ones are probably much less intimately allied. A side-to-side union of more and less partially united vibrators with enough inter- ference to transform motion into tension and correspond- ing modification of all correlated terms, accompanied by an equivalent evolution of heat, will more adequately interpret most chemical phenomena. Nor does chemical compounding appear to be usually preceded by a translation of the atomic axes in such ways as to compel the intimate commingling in advance of their ordinary vibratory fields. On the contrary, chemical unions are generally effected, not by translating the atomic centres of gravity — which would be most efificiently done by ordinary sensible motion, — but rather through extending the vibratory elongations by means of communicated heat, electricity, or other modes of free motion. Thus the abnormally elongated vibrations are enabled to come in contact side to side, if their respective paths are adjusted each to the other. Two such meeting vibrations, oppositely directed, must then unite ; and, other things equal, the resulting tension compels the approach of their respective atomic centres, with evolution of free motion. Probably in most cases of active chemical combination, translation and increased elongation are working together to guide adapted vibrations into the proper contact. Ignorant as we are of actual vibratory structures, it would be absurd to assume to indicate special details through which the various combinations are produced. One can hope only to convey some definite idea of the general method of tension-forming by means of oppositely directed and correlated motions. Whenever there is a readjustment of energies which more or less involves the entire co-operative system, these must produce a new adjustment of effects upon our organs of sense. To our sensations the substances take MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 93 on new properties. Objectively there is a rhythmic variation of heats and tensions in time and space to correspond. The compound is also a new substance in its co-operations with other substances ; it can now enter into still further combinations — from some of which it was debarred by its unmodified atomic rhythms. If we can comprehend the nature of tensions and of the several typical processes which produce tensions from the co-operations of actively correlated motions, we shall easily comprehend that matter, however solid and passive it may appear, is purely, exclusively, motion ; and that motion is purely, exclusively, correlated modes of an ever-existing power ; and that these co-operative modes are demonstrably adequate to produce all conceivable phenomena. As shown in the diagrams, the formation of a tension from opposed motions must always mean a contraction of both lines of elongation. Their actual extension is not contracted ; their actual energy is not diminished ; the difference arises wholly as a transformation of form and modes, but, given like conditions otherwise, no chemical compound, perhaps no physical one can re- quire quite as much leeway for its vibrations as the elements required when uncompounded. If many vibrators separately unite in a gaseous mole- cule, three, five, or twenty of them need have no more apparent volume than a molecule of two atoms presuma- bly physically united. The hydrogen atom being the unit of volume, all gaseous molecules have equal vol- umes, and the molecule of many atoms needs no more room to work in than the agile hydrogen molecule. Is not then the rhythmic ultimate system of motion fairly available for the explanation of facts ? Is it not evident that tensions, made tense by continuously opposed energy, must diminish each other's need of present space for active movement ? 94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. Every compound is as much a mathematical product as eight is the product of twice four. Different substances, occupying different apparent volumes, are made from the same elements combined in the same proportions even ; but when experimentally tested, shown to be variously combined — that is, they are put together in very differ- PlK-K 0) )0 ^^A ^>®B' FIG. 13. Three-atom molecule united by homologous (A) vibrations. A, groups retracted ; B, groups elongated. A chemical molecule. ent ways. We know that with a few blocks a boy may construct many unlike figures, but it is not enough to regard the molecules of isomeric substances simply as differently put together. They put themselves into their unlike configurations by actively uniting in different amounts, thus producing unlike amounts as well as kinds of MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 95 tensions — with corresponding unlike amounts of rejected free motion. The differenced tensions we recognize as dissimilar properties. But it is essential to mental rest that we should be able to think rational and possible co- operative methods competent to produce these unlike properties. There is nothing satisfactory in simply being able to affirm that a diamond is carbon so put together B ....B.. B " B' ■•■■b'-' b " FIG. 14. Three-atom molecule united by homologous (A) vibrations. A, groups elongated ; B, groups retracted. A chemical molecule. that it is transparent to the light, and charcoal is carbon put together so differently that it is not transparent to light. We still ask : Why are they so different ? Why can the diamond so beautifully help the sunshine on its way rejoicing, while the charcoal can only bury it in the depths of its own blackness ? If the co-operation of different vibrators, with unlike rhythmic changes, producing greater, less, and dissimilar 96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. Strains and elasticities, can be accepted as proximate causes ; if we are able to think of the ultimate parts of the diamond as moving to a rhythm so far in unison with that of light that all the rays can move on uninterruptedly through it, or some portion be flashed out to us from the surface, while the discordant rhythms of the charcoal can only respond by becoming confusedly heated, this is certainly a comfortable advance in the way of explana- tion — possible at any rate to our apprehension. It is found that in compounds having similar combining methods and some similarity of properties, the same ele- ment uniformly appropriates the same space— retains the same atomic volume. But the atomic volume differs with a differenced tension, as nitrogen has one volume when combined with carbon in cyanogen and another com- bined with oxygen in nitrous vapor. A " radical " remaining in permanent combination may repeatedly exchange less stably united atoms for those of a different element which can unite in a similar manner, with about the same relation of tensions and free motions — indicated by the liberation of heat — and with similar reactions in co-operation with other substances and in their effects upon our sensations. Energy in compounds represents the combined energy of the elements. But in the most permanent substances this energy is represented by tensions — not by free motions. It has become tangible ^natter to be appre- hended by our senses and able effectually to resist our at- tempts to change its substance in any other way than through the agency of other forces subtle enough to un- loose the fastenings by which every part is grappled to every other by the innate power in both, which must be turned in some new direction before it will let go its present modes of energizing. The interlocked motion seems dull and inert measured by outside standards ; it is fully utilized in maintaining its MATTER A COMPLEX OF MODES OF MOTION. 97 opposed tensions. Unlock these, set the bound energies measurably free, and every atom is itself again, a living centre of motions as unresting as a ray of sunshine on its way through the throbbing ether. The proverbial clod- dishness of solid matter is but the steady poise of an Atlas supporting a world upon his shoulders. Remove the world and the giant can puff down all the forests round about with a breath. Tensions and free motions are the two distinctly opposite types of energy. Wherever there is most tension there is least motion, and vice versa. The freest modes require the most free space. Chemical union is the mechanical increase of tension ; and all its facts and processes can be explained by mechan- ical laws if we admit that an atom is a rhythmic centre of variously polarized vibrations each of which represents a distinct mode and quantity of energy. When a definite number of vibrators are combined in what has been called chemical union, there are still those or others free enough to co-operate in other physical processes, as in reflecting light, radiating heat ; drawing tenser lines of contractive co-operation, as in gravitation ; conducting or resisting the conduction of electricity, etc. The chemists have learned ingeniously to produce certain desired compounds by the systematic introduction of motion, in some form, in order to accomplish the required composition of elements or of radicals and elements. Also, chemists introduce motion in order to decompose existing compounds, and the shaking apart can be accom- plished as readily as the shaking together. Atoms with vibrating lines which will interlock if brought together in a free state by communicated motion can also be shaken apart by energetic adapted motion. The equilibrium of every molecular system must be contin- uously maintained about a common centre of gravity ; but at the same time, a distinct equilibration of motions and ten- sions in exact balance about each atomic centre must be 98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALITY. continuously achieved by every constituent atom in its own behalf. If the perfect atomic equipoise could be in any way disturbed, a fact so disastrous would involve the destruction of its constitutional correlativity. To assume ■ /Wt" .iO -^ "^'•yK'- ■:■:■-" m ■••:-:-'A;3 A ^l ^:-:..Mk..-^ AS, nyit