Matter and spirit / read by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Matter and spirit / read by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ticular combination of atoms which composes molecules ^ which molecules are the ultimate form of being that is perceptible to the human senses. One only of what is doubtless an infinite variety of atomic combinations in creation being perceptible to us— that is to say, our senses being constructed to perceive but that one particular combination of atoms that forms what Science calls molecules, these are in fact the ultimate particles of all that can be seen, felt, heard, tasted by us. The entire of that small fraction of creation that is perceptible to our senses is composed of molecules, and molecular structure is controlled by a certain class of laws we term the physical or natural laws, and are moved by certain physical forces whose existence is only known to us by their action upon molecular structure. This, then, is “ matter/'' or what alone we call “ matter.” Whatever is of molecular structure is “ matter,” and therefore “ matter ” is whatever is perceptible to the human senses. There might be about us a whole Universe of things constructed of some other combination of atoms than that we call molecular, and they would be wholly unseen, unfelt, unknown to us. We should be in absolute ignorance of their presence. “Matter,” then, for the purposes of Psychological scieuce, and as it is desired to be understood within the Psychological Society, and in which sense only it will be recognised in their proceedings, is that combination of atoms which alone is perceptible to the human senses. Whatever any human sense, unaided or aided, can per- ceive, is “ matter.” All things perceptible to any human sense are material. Nothing that is not made of mole- cules can affect any human sense, which is excited only by the impinging upon it of something that is material—that is, of molecular structure. We do not feel the physical MU]