" Since Haeckel seemed to have begun the voyage into
multiplicity that Pearson had forbidden to Englishmen, he should
have been a safe pilot to the point, at least, of a "proper
essence of substance" in its attributes of matter and energy: but
Ernst Mach seemed to go yet one step further, for he rejected
matter altogether, and admitted but two processes in nature --
change of place and interconversion of forms. Matter was Motion
-- Motion was Matter -- the thing moved.
A student of history had no need to understand these scientific
ideas of very great men; he sought only the relation with the
ideas of their grandfathers, and their common direction towards
the ideas of their grandsons. He had long ago reached, with
Hegel, the limits of contradiction; and Ernst Mach scarcely added
a shade of variety to the identity of opposites; but both of them
seemed to be in agreement with Karl Pearson on the facts of the
supersensual universe which could be known only as unknowable.
With a deep sigh of relief, the traveller turned back to
France. There he felt safe. No Frenchman except Rabelais and
Montaigne had ever taught anarchy other than as path to order.
Chaos would be unity in Paris even if child of the guillotine. To
make this assurance mathematically sure, the highest scientific
authority in France was a great mathematician, M.
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