The objection, though extremely plausible, is based on a false assumption—that is, on the supposition that there can be distance from the active power of one element to the matter of another. The truth is that, however far matter may be distant from matter, no active power can ever be distant from it. For no distance in space is conceivable without two formal ubications. Now, a material element has undoubtedly a formal ubication in space by reason of its matter, which is the centre of its sphere of activity, but not by reason of its active power. Distances, in fact, are always measured from a point to a point, and never from a point to an active power, nor from an active power to a point. The matter of a primitive element marks out a point in space, and from this point we take the direction of its exertions; but the power of an element, as contradistinguished from its matter, is not a point in space, nor does it mark a point in space, nor is it conceivable as a term of distance. And therefore to suppose that there may be a distance from the active power of an element to the point where another element is ubicated, is to make a false supposition. The active power transcends the predicament _ubi_, and has no place within which we can confine it; it is not circumscribed like matter, and is not transmissible, as the objection supposes, from place to place through any material medium; it is ready, on the contrary, to act directly and immediately upon any matter existing in its indefinite(1) sphere, while its own matter is circumscriptively ubicated in that single point(2) which is the centre of the same sphere. Prof. Faraday explicitly affirmed that “each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet always retains its own centre of force”;(3) which, in metaphysical language, means that while _the matter_ of a primitive element occupies a single point, _the form_ constitutes around it an indefinite sphere of power. And for this reason it was Faraday’s opinion that the words _actio in distans_ should not be employed in science. For although the matter of one body is distant from the matter of another, yet the power that acts is not distant; and therefore, although there is no contact of matter with matter, there is a _contactus virtutis_, or a contact of power with matter, which alone is required for the production of the effect.