Page:Truth and Error (1898).djvu/33

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judgment. About unknown and unknowable things any assertion may be made, and all philosophies that are founded upon these reifications are therefore philosophies of disputation, as no two are alike. That which some great mind imposes upon his generation is by a succeeding generation gradually found to be more or less erroneous, and new philosophies are thus forever springing up, the one not founded upon the other; but gradually from generation to generation science establishes some things.

The relations which we are now to consider are those which are discovered when bodies are considered as particles. Quite a new class is discovered when we consider bodies as bodies.

As every particle of inanimate matter is a combination of four essential factors there are four classes of relations, namely: relations of plurality, relations of position, relations of path and relations of change, and these are all concomitant in number, space, motion and time. The same fact may be expressed in this manner. Relations of number are founded upon pluralities; relations of extension are founded upon position; relations of motion are founded upon trajectory; relations of time are founded upon change. Thus we have four classes of relations that must exist between particles. Then bodies have internal relations of particles and external relations when the body is considered as a particle in a higher body.

II

In a former chapter we spoke of the essentials of a particle of matter and considered them separately. Now we must consider them as they are related. There is a multeity of units, and plurality is founded