This last sentence contains a tacit suggestion which must, however, beexcluded. The apparent implication is that a confessedly imperfect theorymay, by extension after the manner described, be changed into an avowedlyperfect one. But we may anticipate that the extension will prove in largemeasure impracticable. Complete accounts of the beginnings and ends of individualobjects cannot in most cases be reached: their initial and terminal stagesare left vague after investigation has done its best. Still more, then, withthe totality of things must we conclude that the initial and terminal stagesare beyond the reach of our intelligence. As we cannot fathom either theinfinite past or the infinite future, it follows that both the emergenceand immergence of the totality of sensible existences must ever remain mattersof speculation only: speculation more or less justified by reasoning fromestablished data, but still -- speculation.
Hence the conception of Philosophy above implied must be regarded as anideal to which the real can never do more than approximate. Ideals in general-- even those of the exact sciences -- cannot be reached, but can only benearly approached; and yet they in common with other ideals, are indispensableaids to inquiry and discovery. So that while it may remain the aim of philosophyto give that comprehensive account of things which includes passage fromthe imperceptible into the perceptible and again from the perceptible intothe imperceptible, yet it may be admitted that it must ever fall short ofthis aim. Still, while recognizing its inevitable incompleteness, we inferthat such approach to completeness as is possible will be affected underguidance of the conceptions reached in the last two chapters. That generallaw of the redistribution of matter and motion which we lately saw is requiredto unify the various kinds of changes, must also be one that unifies thesuccessive changes which sensible existences, separately and together, passthrough between their appearance and their disappearance. Only by some formulacombining these characters can knowledge be reduced to a coherent whole. §94. Already in the foregoing paragraphs the formula is foreshadowed.
Already in recognizing the fact that Science, tracing back the historiesof various objects, finds their components were once in diffused states,and forecasting their futures sees that diffused states will be again assumedby them, we have recognized the facts that the formula must be one comprehendingthe two opposite processes of concentration and dispersion. And already inthus describing the general nature of the formula, we have approached a specificexpression of it. The change from a dispersed, imperceptible state to a concentrated,perceptible state, is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipationof motion; and the change from a concentrated, perceptible state to a dispersed,imperceptible state, is an absorption of motion and concomitant disintegrationof matter. These are truisms. Constituent parts cannot aggregate withoutlosing some of their relative motion; and they cannot separate without morerelative motion being given to them. We are not concerned here with any motionwhich the components of a mass have with respect to other masses: we areconcerned only with the motion they have with respect to one another. Confiningour attention to this internal motion, and to the matter possessing it, theaxiom which we have to recognize is that a progressing consolidation involvesa decrease of internal motion; and that increase of internal motion involvesa progressing unconsolidation.
