The historian never stopped repeating to himself that he knew
nothing about it; that he was a mere instrument of measure, a
barometer, pedometer, radiometer; and that his whole share in the
matter was restricted to the measurement of thought-motion as
marked by the accepted thinkers. He took their facts for granted.
He knew no more than a firefly about rays -- or about race -- or
sex -- or ennui -- or a bar of music -- or a pang of love -- or a
grain of musk -- or of phosphorus -- or conscience -- or duty --
or the force of Euclidian geometry -- or non-Euclidian -- or heat
-- or light -- or osmosis -- or electrolysis -- or the magnet --
or ether -- or vis inertiae -- or gravitation -- or cohesion --
or elasticity -- or surface tension -- or capillary attraction --
or Brownian motion -- or of some scores, or thousands, or
millions of chemical attractions, repulsions or indifferences
which were busy within and without him; or, in brief, of Force
itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen
definitions in the textbooks, mostly contradictory, and all, as
he was assured, beyond his intelligence; but summed up in the
dictum of the last and highest science, that Motion seems to be
Matter and Matter seems to be Motion, yet "we are probably
incapable of discovering" what either is. History had no need to
ask what either might be; all it needed to know was the admission
of ignorance; the mere fact of multiplicity baffling science.
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