Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/74

 different varieties of energy. The first of these ideas is older and more familiar to us, but it has not for that reason a more certain existence. Energy is objective reality for the same reason that matter is. The latter certainly appears more tangible and more easily grasped by the senses. But, upon reflection, we are assured that the best proof of their existence, in both cases, is given by the law of their conservation—that is to say, their persistence in subsisting.

The objective existence of matter and that of energy will therefore be taken here as a postulate of physical science. Metaphysicians may discuss them. We have but little room for such a discussion.

§ I..

It is certainly difficult to give a definition of matter which will satisfy both physicists and metaphysicians.

''Mechanical Explanation of the Universe. Matter is Mass.''—Physicists have a tendency to consider all natural phenomena from the point of view of mechanics. They believe that there is a mechanical explanation of the universe. They are always on the look out for it, implicitly or explicitly. They endeavour to reduce each category of physical facts to the type of the facts of mechanics. They have made up their minds to see nowhere anything but the play of motion and force. Astronomy is celestial mechanics. Acoustics is the mechanics of the vibratory movements of the air or of sonorous bodies. Physical optics has become the mechanics of the undulations of the ether, after having been the mechanics of emission—a wonderful