B. That I cannot tell, but we seem to have indications. For the more fine the matter which we investigate, the more its actions seem to annihilate distance: light and electricity produce their effects with far greater rapidity than do the movements of masses. We might suppose that to this ultimate matter all parts were present in their effects, so that anything emanating from the ultimate matter would have the appearance of a system comprehending everything.
A. But you have not got any evidence of an ultimate matter.
B. No, all that we can think of is an endless series of finer and finer matter. But is that not an indication rather, not that the direction of our thoughts is false, but that there are other characteristics of this ultimate, so that when looked at under the form of matter it can only be expressed as an infinite series.
Let us omit the considerations brought forward in the preceding conversation and examine more closely the philosophy of the inhabitants of the valley in so far as it corresponds with ours.
They laid great stress on a notion of vis viva, or what we should term energy, but said it was gradually passing away from the form of movements of large bodies to that of movements of small bodies. So that in the course of time the whole valley would consist of nothing but an evenly extended mass of matter moving only in its small particles—and this motion of the small particles they called heat. Now they had very clearly arrived at the conviction that with every mechanical motion there was a certain transference of vis viva to the smaller particles of matter, so that it did not appear again as mechanical motion. But they did not accept this as a principle to work by. They did not consider that the motions of the smaller particles of matter were just the same as those of the larger masses. They did not see that if a condition held universally for the movements of the visible world, it must also hold for the smaller motions which they experienced as heat. So the conclusion which they should logically have come to that there was a transference of vis viva on and on was not held. But the step was a very little one for them to take from regarding an invariable condition as always there to regarding it as a cause. For the causes they assigned were all purely formal relations, and only got to assume an appearance of effective causes by familiarity with them, and a throwing over them of that feeling of effectiveness which they derived from the contact which they had with the king.
They might have reasoned. This universal condition of anything happening must be the cause. Energy goes from a higher to a lower level. That which causes the difference of level is the cause, and the cause of the difference of level must be that which invariably accompanies such a transference of energy from a higher to a lower level. Now this invariable condition is the passing of a portion of the energy into the form of motions of the finer parts of matter. Hence there is an apparently endless series. But to realize the matter, suppose an ultimate medium, suppose there is a kind of matter of infinite fineness distributed everywhere which let itself be worked on, and so determines differences and wakens the sleeping world. What are the qualities of this fine matter? We see them in the properties of the finer kind of matter which we know, such as light, electricity. The property of the finer kind of matter is in general that it tends to bring distant places together, so that a change in one part is rapidly communicated to every other part. If they followed this indication they would have supposed that the ultimate fine matter was of such a nature as to make all parts of the valley as one, so that there was no distance, and any determination of a difference of level on the part of this ultimate matter would have reference to all the conditions everywhere. It would be in immediate contact with every part, so that anything springing therefrom would present the appearance of a system having regard to the whole. Now if they had imagined such an ultimate medium doing that which to them would seem bearing rather than exerting force, suffering rather than acting, they would not have been far from a true conception of the king who directed them all. For he himself by reason of his very omnipresence could not be seen by them. There was nothing for them to distinguish him by. But they could have discovered somewhat of the means by which he acted on them, which can only be described from the appearances they present to the creatures whom the king calls into life.
But of truth they would have had another and perhaps a truer apprehension of the king in a different way. For when he acted on them so that they took one course rather than another, it was his action in themselves that they felt. If they were mere pleasure-led creatures then they were shaped outwardly, but if in their inner souls he acted and through them suffered, then they were true personalities conscious of being true selves, the oneness of all of them lying in the king, but each spontaneous in himself and absolute will, not to be merged in any other.
Thus they had two modes of access to the king, one through their own selves where he had made them exist, one through the outer world. And in the outer world it was but a direction in which they could look. They could never behold the personality of the king, but only an infinite series of different kinds of matter, one supporting the other as it were and underlying it, but doing more also than this, for in proportion as they considered the kinds of matter that lay deeper they found that distant became near, absent, present, that time gave no longer such distinctions, but from the phenomenal side they seemed by a gradual diminution of the limitations of experience to arrive at an external presentation of that absolute which exists in the fulness of things, which they knew more immediately in themselves when they truly were.
THE END.