In fact, the word matter appears to be used in other senses by physicists, but this is only apparently so. They have but broadened the idea of the mechanicians. They have characterized matter by the whole series of phenomenal manifestations which are _proportional to mass_, such as weight, volume, chemical properties—so that we may say that the notion of matter does not intervene scientifically with a different signification from that of mass. _Two kinds of Matter. Ponderable and Imponderable._—In physics we distinguish between two kinds of matter—ponderable, obeying the law of universal attraction or weight, and imponderable matter or ether, which we assume to exist and to escape the action of that force. Ether has no weight, or extremely little weight. It is material in so far as it has mass. It is its mass which confers existence on it from the mechanical point of view—a logical existence, inferred from the necessity of explaining the propagation of heat, light, or electricity. It may be observed that the use of mass really comes to bringing another element, force, to intervene, and we shall see that force is connected with energy; thus it comes to defining matter indirectly by energy. The two fundamental elements are not therefore irreducible; on the contrary, they should be one and the same thing. _Energy is the only Objective Reality._—This fusion into one will become more evident still when we examine the different kinds of energy, each of which exactly corresponds to one of the aspects of active matter. Shall we define matter by _extension_, by the portion of space it occupies, as certain philosophers do? The physicist will answer that space is only known to us by the expenditure of energy necessary to penetrate it (the activity of our different senses). And then what is weight? It is _energy of position_ (universal attraction). And so with the other attributes. So that if matter were separated from the energetic phenomena by means of which it is revealed to us—weight or energy of position, impenetrability or energy of volume, chemical properties or chemical energies, mass or capacity for kinetic energy—the very idea of matter would vanish. And that comes to saying that fundamentally there is only one objective reality, _energy_. _Philosophical Point of View._—But from the philosophical point of view are there objective realities? That is a wider question which throws doubt upon matter itself, and which it is not our place to investigate here. A metaphysician may always discuss and deny the existence of the objective world. It may be maintained that man knows nothing beyond his sensations, and that he only objectivates them and projects them outside himself by a kind of hereditary illusion. We must avoid taking sides in all these difficulties. Physics for the moment ignores them—_i.e._, postpones their consideration.