Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/441

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SOYESHIMA. 381 SPACE. at Nagasaki he came under the influence of Guido F. Verbeek . ( q.v. ) , an Anu'iioan missionary, by wliom he was tauglit, particularly in the Xew Testament and the Constitution of the United States. Giving his special attention to the study of law, he was in 1S6S made a eonimissionor by the new Government for framing laws and later an Imperial councilor. In 1S71 the Mikado sent him to Russian Siberia to settle the boundary question concerning the island of Saghalien, and in the following year he was an ambassador to the Emperor of China regarding Loo-choo. As Jlinister of Foreign Affairs he was instrumental in releasing the Cliinese coolies from a Peruvian vessel at Yokohama and thus ending the coolie trathe. (See Macao.) On his return to Japan he resigned his office because of diflerences on the Korean War question, but in private life continued to be influential in agitation for con- stitutional government, and later was invited to rei^nter the Cabinet. He revisited China in 1S7(>, was welcomed and lauded by the mandarins for his scholarship, and became a trusted private ad- viser of the Emperor, especially in his library. SCYOTS. A people of the Sayan-Altai re- gion, ilongolian in race, u.sually classed with the S:imoyeds. They are of rather low stature, with brachycephalic head form. They are at present a mixed people, with the anthropological tyije of the Samoyed most prominent. They are hunters and nomads, and number some 35,000 or 40,000 in the Chinese Yenesei basin. SOZ'OMEN (Gk. "Zu^oixevis. Sozomenos), HEE.MIA8 Salamixius. A Cluirch historian of the fiftli century. He came from a wealthy family of Palestine and spent at least a part of his life as a lawyer at Constantinople. He Arote a his- tory of the Church, covering the period from 323 to 439. The latter portion, dealing with the years from 423 to 42.5, is lost. He follows Socrates, but has some independent material, especially upon monastic matters. The work was edited by Hussey (C)xford, 1S60), and there is an English translation by Hartranft (Xew York, 1S91). SPA, spii. A famous watering place in the Province of Liege, Belgium, 20 miles southeast of the city of Lilge (Map: Belgium, D 4). It is attractively situated in a hilly region. The waters • of the Pouhon spring are largely exported. It is in an inclo'sure erected to commemorate the visit of Peter the Great in 1717. The Etablissement des Bains, a handsome modern structure, is in the Place Royale adjacent to the Casino. There are noted manufactures of woodenware, which is stained brown liy being steeped in the mineral waters. Population, in 1900, S192. Spa gained prominence in the sixteenth century and reached its greatest popularity in the eighteenth century, when it was the favorite resort of the European nobility. It declined in importance after the French Revolution, but is rapidly regaining its former prestige. About 15,000 people visit the place annually. 'Spa' as applied to mineral springs originated in the name of this town. SPACE (OF., Fr. espacc. from Lat. spatium, space; connected with spcs. hope, OChurch Slav. S})fti, to result, Lith. speti. to have leisure, AS. upOiran. OHG.. spoiiaii. to succeed. Skt. Kphaii. to fatten). A term denoting the physical basis for dimension and magnitude. From ancient times it has occupied a large place in philosophical dis- cussions. Parmenides and Plato make it equiva- lent to non-being. Leueippus, on the contrary, recognizes its reality. Space of course is presup- posed as a fundamental reality in all material- istic atomism. Aristotle defines place as limit, thereby committing himself to the denial of empty space. In modern philosophy the nature of space is one of the central questions. Des- cartes considered it one of the two attributes of reality, and Spinoza followed him in making it one of the two known attributes. Leibnitz can- not recognize space as an original attribute of his monads, else they become material and not spiritual. Space is therefore only the order of possible coexistent phenomena of sense. W hen thought clarities away the obscurities of sense space is no longer left as a relation in which realities stand to each other. Natural science, however, and materialism have vigorously main- tained the ultimate reality of space. Berkeley practically, reduces space to time and Hume makes it the disposition of colored jioints. Kant taught that space is a form of perception; phe- nomena appear in space simply because the mind gives them a local habitation, and, he argues, we may not say that things in themselves are spa- tial. He tries to prove the a priori character o£ space from its inevitableness in our experience; and according to his view whatever is a priori must be of subjective origin. Hegel regards it as •the first or immediate characteristic of nature,' and yet it is an abstract characteristic, not an independent entity. At the present time there are advocates of almost all theories that have in the past been broached. There are transeenden- talists (Kantians) ; there are realists, who attribute an independent reality to space as if it were a vessel to be filled with olijects; there are tho.se who believe that our idea of space is so full of contradictions that it has no ultimate value; and there are those who believe it is a real quality of experienced objects and a real rela- tion between such objects, but who refuse to attribute to it an existence entirely apart from the objects it qualifies or correlates. The last mentioned view seems to be in closer agreement with the facts than any of the others. According to this view pure space is an abstraction having no actual existence. Space is always in experi- ence the figure of some object or the distance between some objects, or in some way an attribute or a relation, not a self-existent thing. The question of the origin of our spatial ideas is psychological. A question that has always been milch mooted is that as to the finitude or the infinity of space. Kant tried to cut the Gordian knot by denying the reality of space as a thing in itself, whereby he thought to be able to say that the whole trouble was removed. Space is, therefore, for Kant neither infinite nor finite, but there is no limit to our power to produce space. It is indefinitely producible. Taking, however, the view that space is a real but not an independent element in the objective world, the question as to the infinity of space becomes one to be answered only on the basis of induction (q.v.) ; and, if we may judge from past experi- ence, we shoidd say "that there is no definite indication that experienceable spatial objects are limited. But the data are not sufficient for a dogmatic judgment. But een if an end of perceptible objects were found imagination would add further objects, and thus remove the lim- its. See Baumann, Die Lehre vom Rauin, Zeit