obvious corollary from that at which we arrived in the foregoing section. If, as was there contended, our consciousness of Space is a product of accumulated experiences, partly our own but chiefly ancestral—if, as was pointed out, the experiences from which our consciousness of Space is abstracted, can be received only through impressions of resistance made upon the organism; the necessary inference is, that experiences of resistance being those from which the conception of Space is generated, the resistance-attribute of Matter must be regarded as primordial and the space-attribute as derivative. Whence it becomes manifest that our experience of _force_, is that out of which the idea of Matter is built. Matter as opposing our muscular energies, being immediately present to consciousness in terms of force; and its occupancy of Space being known by an abstract of experiences originally given in terms of force; it follows that forces, standing in certain correlations, form the whole content of our idea of Matter. Such being our cognition of the relative reality, what are we to say of the 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 cognition of Matter is shown alike by the above analysis, and by the contradictions which are evolved when we deal with the cognition as an absolute one (§ 16). But, as we have lately seen, though known to us only under relation, Matter is as real in the true sense of that word, as it would be could we know it out of relation; and further, the relative reality which we know as Matter, is necessarily represented to the mind as standing in a persistent or real relation to the absolute reality. We may therefore deliver ourselves over without hesitation, to those terms of thought which experience has organized in us. We need not in our physical, chemical, or other researches, refrain from dealing with Matter as made up of extended and resistent atoms; for this conception, necessarily resulting from our experiences of Matter, is not less legitimate, than the conception of aggregate masses as extended and resistent. The atomic hypothesis, as well as the kindred hypothesis of an all-pervading ether consisting of molecules, is simply a necessary development of those universal forms which the actions of the Unknowable have wrought in us. The conclusions logically worked out by the aid of these hypotheses, are sure to be in harmony with all others which these same forms involve, and will have a relative truth that is equally complete. * * * * *