Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/405

ON MB. s. HODGSON'S METAPHYSIC OF EXPERIENCE. 391 Matter is real in both senses of the word Eeality, it is real as percept and it is real as existent. It is real condition and agent. Yet it is not an ultimate conception, we must ask concerning it the question, how comes? Why must we? We cannot put the question, how comes? concerning time or space or the order of real conditioning, why must we put it concerning matter? The answer I think is obvious, it is because matter is a complex not a simple concept or percept. "Matter is adverse occupancy of space." "In all Matter there are parts which cohere so as to occupy space, and this coherence or occupation of space is Force. That is to say the fact of coherence taken in abstraction is Force, the coherence of parts is Matter " (iv., 295). Space is infinitely divisible, Matter is not, it has a minimum limit to its magni- tude. Consequently the minimum of Matter consists of two portions of space held together, which portions imagined apart must be conceived as unoccupied or else occupied with parts of Matter which are not Matter until brought together. In other words, Matter consists of two parts of space and the force which makes them cohere. What those parts of space are by themselves, more than being parts of space we do not know. Clearly therefore Matter is not an ultimate conception whether in the sense of causa sui et mundi or in any sense whatever. It accounts for nothing, but itself wants accounting for. It is a composite notion and we must ask how its elements have come together and how they are to be conceived apart. The answer we cannot give, for the real conditions of Matter are in the Unseen World. It is for this reason that Mr. Hodgson finds philosophical Materialism untenable. This whole conception of Matter appears to me contradic- tory and useless for any philosophical purpose whatever. So far from being a positively known reality it appears to me a mere figment of the imagination containing its own refutation in the idea of it. I have nothing to say against it as a postulate of mathematics or an ultimate datum of science, but I fail to see how it can justify itself in philosophy. It is not either the elephant or the tortoise or the something or other, I know not what, of Locke's Indian philosopher. It is a purely abstract concept which must be filled by the ima- gination before it becomes an object. Its simplest form is a compound of two parts with one attribute and in its simplest form it is never met with. Whatever may be thought to be explained by it, the diversity of form at any point between its simplest imaginable condition and its highest known development will raise again every problem supposed to be