{Objections}

It may be objected, thirdly, that, in general, the peculiar mode of distribution which I have suggested for the atoms, is ›an hypothesis and nothing more.‹

Now, I am aware that the word hypothesis is a ponderous sledge-hammer, grasped immediately, if not lifted, by all very diminutive thinkers, upon the first appearance of any proposition wearing, in any particular, the garb of a theory. But ›hypothesis‹ cannot be wielded here to any good purpose, even by those who succeed in lifting it – little men or great.

I maintain, first, that only in the mode described is it conceivable that Matter could have been diffused so as to fulfil at once the conditions of irradiation and of generally equable distribution. I maintain, secondly, that these conditions themselves have been imposed upon me, as necessities, in a train of ratiocination as rigorously logical as that which establishes any demonstration in Euclid; and I maintain, thirdly, that even if the charge of ›hypothesis‹ were as fully sustained as it is, in fact, unsustained and untenable, still the validity and indisputability of my result would not, even in the slightest particular, be disturbed.

To explain: – The Newtonian Gravity – a law of Nature – a law whose existence as such no one out of Bedlam questions – a law whose admission as such enables us to account for nine-tenths of the Universal phænomena – a law which, merely because it does so enable us to account for these phænomena, we are perfectly willing, without reference to any other considerations, to admit, and cannot help admitting, as a law – a law, nevertheless, of which neither the principle nor the modus operandi of the principle, has ever yet been traced by the human analysis – a law, in short, which, neither in its detail nor in its generality, has been found susceptible of explanation at all – is at length seen to be at every point thoroughly explicable, provided we only yield our assent to –– what? To an hypothesis? Why if an hypothesis – if the merest hypothesis – if an hypothesis for whose assumption – as in the case of that pure hypothesis the Newtonian law itself – no shadow of à priori reason could be assigned – if an hypothesis, even so absolute as all this implies, would enable us to perceive a principle for the Newtonian law – would enable us to understand as satisfied, conditions so miraculously – so ineffably complex and seemingly irreconcileable as those involved in the relations of which Gravity tells us, – what rational being could so expose his fatuity as to call even this absolute hypothesis an hypothesis any longer – unless, indeed, he were to persist in so calling it, with the understanding that he did so, simply for the sake of consistency in words?

But what is the true state of our present case? What is the fact? Not only that it is not an hypothesis which we are required to adopt, in order to admit the principle at issue explained, but that it is a logical conclusion which we are requested not to adopt if we can avoid it – which we are simply invited to deny if we can: – a conclusion of so accurate a logicality that to dispute it would be the effort – to doubt its validity beyond our power: – a conclusion from which we see no mode of escape, turn as we will; a result which confronts us either at the end of an inductive journey from the phænomena of the very Law discussed, or at the close of a deductive career from the most rigorously simple of all conceivable assumptions – the assumption, in a word, of Simplicity itself.

And if here, for the mere sake of cavilling, it be urged, that although my starting-point is, as I assert, the assumption of absolute Simplicity, yet Simplicity, considered merely in itself, is no axiom; and that only deductions from axioms are indisputable – it is thus that I reply: –