第59章

Hence the necessity we are under of representing to ourselves the ultimateelements of Matter as being at once extended and resistant: this being theuniversal form of our sensible experiences of Matter, becomes the form whichour conception of it cannot transcend, however minute the fragments whichimaginary subdivisions produce. Of these two inseparable elements, the resistanceis Primary and the extension secondary. Occupied extension, or Body, beingdistinguished in consciousness from unoccupied extension, or Space, by itsresistance, this attribute must clearly have precedence in the genesis ofthe idea. If, as was argued in the last section, the experiences, mainlyancestral, from which our consciousness of Space is abstracted, can be receivedonly through impressions of resistance made on the organism; the implicationis, that experiences of resistance being those from which the conceptionof Space is generated, the resistance-attribute of Matter must be regardedas primordial and the space-attribute as derivative. Whence it becomes clearthat our experiences of force, are those out of which the idea of Matteris built. Matter as opposing our muscular energies, being immediately presentto consciousness in terms of force; and its occupancy of Space being knownby an abstract of experiences originally given in terms of force; it followsthat forces, standing in certain correlations, form the whole content ofour idea of Matter.

Such being our cognition of the relative reality, what are we to say ofthe absolute reality? We can only say that it is some mode of the Unknowable,related to the Matter we know as cause to effect. The relativity of our cognitionof Matter is shown alike by the above analysis, and by the contradictionswhich are evolved when we deal with the cognition as an absolute one (§16).