CHAPTER XIX. LATENT FORCE IN INTERSTITIAL SPACES--ELECTRO-MAGNETIC RADIATION--MOLECULAR DISSOCIATION. (By John Ernst Worrell Keely.) The atom is infinitely divisible.--Arthur Schopenhauer. For thou well knowest that the imbecility of our understanding, in not comprehending the more abstruse and retired causes of things, is not to be ascribed to any defect in their nature, but in our own hoodwinkt intellect.--P. 6, A Ternary of Paradoxes.--Van Helmont. The advance of science, which for a time overshadowed philosophy, has brought men face to face once more with ultimate questions, and has revealed the impotence of science to deal with its own conditions and pre-suppositions. The needs of science itself call for a critical doctrine of knowledge as the basis of an ultimate theory of things. Philosophy must criticize not only the categories of science but also the metaphysical systems of the past.--Prof. Seth. Latent Force. Science, even in its highest progressive conditions, cannot assert anything definite. The many mistakes that men of science have made in the past prove the fallacy of asserting. By doing so they bastardize true philosophy and, as it were, place the wisdom of God at variance; as in the assertion that latent power does not exist in corpuscular aggregations of matter, in all its different forms, visible or invisible. Take, for example, gunpowder, which is composed of three different mediums of aggregated matter, saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur, each representing different orders of molecular density which, when associated under proper conditions, gives what is called an explosive compound. In fact it is a mass which is made susceptible at any moment by its exciter fire, which is an order of vibration, to evolve a most wonderful energy in volume many thousands of times greater than the volume it represents in its molecular mass. If it be not latent force that is thus liberated by its exciter, a mere spark, what is it? Are not the gases that are evolved in such great volume and power held latent in the molecular embrace of its aggregated matter, before being excited into action? If this force is not compressed there, nor placed there by absorption, how did it get there? And by what power was it held in its quiescent state? I contend that it was placed there at the birth of the molecule by the law of sympathetic etheric focalization towards the negative centres of neutrality with a velocity as inconceivable in its character as would be the subdivision of matter to an ultimate end. Again, what is the energy that is held in the molecular embrace of that small portion of dynamite which by slight concussion, another order of vibration, evolves volumes of terrific force, riving the solid rock and hurling massive projectiles for miles? If it is not latent power that is excited into action, what