Note 1065 — Chapter VII

As to the supposed impossibility of conceiving the existence of matter without properties which give rise to forces (note in Paget's Lectures on Pathology, 1853, vol. i. p. 61), there are two reasons which prevent me from attaching much weight to it. First, a conception which, in one stage of knowledge, is called impossible, becomes, in a later stage, perfectly easy, and so natural as to be often termed necessary. Secondly, however indissoluble the connexion may appear between force and matter, it was not found fatal to the dynamical theory of Leibnitz; it has not prevented other eminent thinkers from holding similar views; and the arguments of Berkeley, though constantly attacked, have never been refuted.