Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/513

 512 S. ALEXANDER I (p. 190) was invented to explain the different specific gravities of different things occupying the same volumes. It was supposed that though the particles were alike in all bodies there were fewer particles and more pores in the lighter body. In the phenomenon of elasticity where the particles seemed to penetrate each other, it was supposed the body was compressed by the restriction of its pores. In asserting this negative element of pores, science, Hegel saw, was betraying its sense of the negativity inherent in matter ; but instead of being the negation of matter involved in the nature of matter, these pores were a negative set up as a real existence beside matter, as actually existing where matter is not (p. 203). The same metaphysical assumption vitiated the conception of the atoms and the void. The atoms are not separate material existences ; whenever we speak of material parts, we mean only quantitative differences, which not only do not preclude continuity but require it (p. 202). In elasticity, where the particles seem to take each others' place, we have exhibited in matter only the same contradic- tion of continuousness and punctuality which constitute motion. Elasticity as we saw is cohesion in motion. If then we regard atoms as individual things apart from their continuity, that is, their ideal character, it must be from motives of convenience. And here we find Hegel in agreement with a great modern exponent of the atomic doctrine, Lotze. In just the same way Hegel refuses to hear of the separation of light into pencils. They are a convenient supposition; to regard them as real would be as if we were to separate timj into parts because we can speak of ' Caesar's time ' or ' my time ' (pp. 140-1). This metaphysic of independence, which science, with all its professed allegiance to experience, assumes without war- ranty from experience, had run to greater lengths in Hegel's day than in our own. In Hegel's time (if Hegel will forgive us the expression) they talked of caloric, the substance of heat, of latent caloric for specific heat, and of the electric fluid. We h;ive given up, partly, this way of thinking; but in judging I !<-(! it is fair to remember that he helped to release science from the metaphysical superstitions which retarded its pro- gress. By so doing, he was among those who gave science security for its advance. Even now it needs again and u-uiii to be reminded of the warning which he gave so forcibly against its ingrained habit of hypostatising qualities : a dies, jii'if.'i-tii ti'in}>oris orbe Concretam i-xcmit