THE OBJECTS OF SCIENCE 77

knowledge of the " how anything is " must always repose

upon a previous knowledge of the fact " that it is." To seek

to know the "how" and "why" of every "that," is to

enter upon an inquiry which it is plain cannot possibly have

any end a necessary regressus ad infinitum. All men, even

Idealists themselves, have, we are convinced, consciously

or unconsciously, an intuition of the extended. Nevertheless,

when affirming anything thus evidently true, it is specially

needful to guard against the appearance of declaring any

other things to be evident which really are not evident.

Thus many persons assume that "the extended" must

possess secondary qualities, and, of course, our uniform

sensuous experience renders it impossible for us to imagine

any extended object devoid of such qualities. Yet it really

is not evident that it must possess such qualities, though,

of course, its possession of them may in fact be necessary for

all that.

The "extended" must, of course, have some definite

quantity, but it is not evident that "corporeal substance"

must be extended, or, so to speak, be quantitatively extended

in space. Let us suppose that the earth and the moon were

both simultaneously deprived of their extension while re-

maining individually distinct, the one from the other; they

would, though not externally extended, have a definite state

of some kind, though we cannot imagine it even so well as

we can imagine what Newton said as to the possibility of

reducing the earth, without loss of substance, to the size

of one cubic inch.

Although merely speculative, it is well to recognize that

when Kant argued that the noumenon of substance did

not evidently demand the phenomenon of extension, he was

not unreasonable save in denying our intuition of extension

as a fact. We have no intuition of the essential nature

of material bodies of corporeal substance in itself such

knowledge of the " how anything is " must always repose

upon a previous knowledge of the fact " that it is." To seek

to know the "how" and "why" of every "that," is to

enter upon an inquiry which it is plain cannot possibly have

any end a necessary regressus ad infinitum. All men, even

Idealists themselves, have, we are convinced, consciously

or unconsciously, an intuition of the extended. Nevertheless,

when affirming anything thus evidently true, it is specially

needful to guard against the appearance of declaring any

other things to be evident which really are not evident.

Thus many persons assume that "the extended" must

possess secondary qualities, and, of course, our uniform

sensuous experience renders it impossible for us to imagine

any extended object devoid of such qualities. Yet it really

is not evident that it must possess such qualities, though,

of course, its possession of them may in fact be necessary for

all that.

The "extended" must, of course, have some definite

quantity, but it is not evident that "corporeal substance"

must be extended, or, so to speak, be quantitatively extended

in space. Let us suppose that the earth and the moon were

both simultaneously deprived of their extension while re-

maining individually distinct, the one from the other; they

would, though not externally extended, have a definite state

of some kind, though we cannot imagine it even so well as

we can imagine what Newton said as to the possibility of

reducing the earth, without loss of substance, to the size

of one cubic inch.

Although merely speculative, it is well to recognize that

when Kant argued that the noumenon of substance did

not evidently demand the phenomenon of extension, he was

not unreasonable save in denying our intuition of extension

as a fact. We have no intuition of the essential nature

of material bodies of corporeal substance in itself such