Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/51

 of the laws of matter—those of chemistry and physiology, for instance.’

‘Laws of matter, my dear girl! Matter has no laws; how can it have any? We know nothing of matter; we cannot demonstrate its existence but as the matter of our cognisance, the medium of our consciousness. Matter is immeasurably divisible and augmentable and removable; it is, if you please, the medium of everything, but it is the substance of nothing. In the last resort, it is simply the mode or modes of thought and feeling, and however much you may alter the modes and shift them about, you can never get behind that of which they are the modes. You can never get behind the fact that the laws of nature, chemistry, physiology, what you please, are the laws of our perceptions. The world of thought and sensation is the real world; the matter of which it is composed is a mere condition, not a reality. Science is simply self analysis; mathematics, for instance, do but illustrate the structure of the mind. Its structure limits its view of the world to two classes of operations—analysis, wherein the universe appears as diverse; synthesis, wherein the diversity of the world appears as the universe. But in all other cases alike there is but the one reality, the Mind; Matter has no existence but as the matter of mind. Is that clear to you now?’

‘I gather the idea,’ said his niece, ‘but it is a slippery one to hold, because it contravenes one’s habits.’

‘Man is put in these earthly conditions in order to contravene his habits and form better ones,’ replied her uncle.

After some desultory conversation on other topics the company left the luncheon table, and as they entered the drawing-room a basket-carriage, drawn by a small Shetland, drove up to the hall door. It was occupied by two young ladies, one of whom Lesbia recognised as her friend Rose Dimpleton, the other was a stranger, an American, whom