Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/11

with common-sense observation. There are chairs, tables, bits of rock, oceans, animal bodies, vegetable bodies, planets, and suns. The enduring self-identity of a house, of a farm, of an animal body, is a presupposition of social intercourse. It is assumed in legal theory. It lies at the base of all literature. A bit of matter is thus conceived asa passive fact, an individual neatly which is the same at an instant, or throughout a second, an hour, of a year. Such a material, individual reality supports its various qualifications such as shape, locomotion, colour, or smell, etc. The occurrences of Nature consist in the changes in these qualifications, and more particularly in the changes of motion. The connection between each bits of matter consists purely of spatial relations. Thus, the importance of motion arises from its change of the sole mode of interconnection of material things. Mankind then proceeds to discuss these spatial relations and discovers