the character of wholes in the sphere occupied by them. A mathematical point, line, or surface, is an ens rationis, for it expresses an intellectual act; but a physical atom is ens fictitium, which may be made subservient, as ciphers are in arithmetic, to the purposes of hypothetical construction, per regulam falsi; but transferred to Nature, it is in the strictest sense an absurd quantity; for extension, and consequently divisibility, or multeity,[1] (for space cannot be divided,) is the indispensable condition, under which alone anything can appear to us, or even be thought of, as a thing. But if it should be replied, that the elementary particles are atoms not positively, but by such a hardness communicated to them as is relatively invincible, I should remind the assertor that temeraria citatio supernaturalium est pulvinar intellectûs pigri, and that he who requires me to believe a miracle of his own dreaming, must first work a miracle to convince me that he had dreamt by inspiration. Add, too, the gross inconsistency of resorting to an immaterial influence in order to complete a system of materialism, by the exclusion of all modes of existence which the theorist cannot in imagination, at least, finger and peep at! Each of the preceding gradations, as above defined, might be represented as they exist, and are realised in Nature. But each would require a work for itself,
- ↑ Much against my will I repeat this scholastic term, multeity, but I have sought in vain for an unequivocal word of a less repulsive character, that would convey the notion in a positive and not comparative sense in kind, as opposed to the unum et simplex, not in degree, as contracted with the few. We can conceive no reason that can be adduced in justification of the word caloric, as invented to distinguish the external cause of the sensation heat, which would not equally authorise the introduction of a technical term in this instance.
