CHAPTER III
Two short chapters must now be presented which will be found rather dry, but they must be mastered if the subsequent chapters are to be understood. The principles therein stated are the A, B, C, of the work—the multiplication table of our logic. I beg of my reader not to be deterred from their careful consideration by reason of their simplicity.
I
The universe is a concourse of related bodies composed of related particles. Every relation must exist between two or more particles or bodies, and every particle or body is related to every other particle or body directly or indirectly. The universe is a hierarchy of bodies, and thus there is a hierarchy of relations. A relation cannot exist independent of terms. We may consider a relation abstractly, but it cannot exist abstractly. To affirm a relation the terms must be implied. When an abstract is reified, that is, supposed to exist by itself independent of other essentials, and the illusion is entertained that there is something independent of the essentials which support them, a mythology is created so subtle as to simulate reality. So when relations are reined and supposed to exist independent of terms, the mind is astray in the realm of fallacies. When it is discovered that rest is only a relation, the mind is prone to believe that nothing exists but relation, for we have often discovered that which we thought was absolute was in fact relation; but rest is a relation between terms which are absolute. The internal or molecular motions of the body at rest have a certain relation to the external or astronomic motions of the body which are changed when the body is given molar motion, but the absolutes still remain, though deflected.
Human beings are molar bodies, and have a deep interest in one another as such and in the other molar bodies with which they are associated. Molar bodies and their relations are the first bodies discovered by primitive man, and his converse with the external world at first seems to be wholly with molar bodies. Molar bodies are those in which he first discovers relations and with which he first consciously and purposely associates, and they become the type of the others. Molecular bodies are known as such only to science. The stellar bodies are first believed to be molar bodies, and it is long before the corporeal structure of the earth is discovered as a body of great magnitude associated with other bodies more nearly commensurate with them, as the sun, moon and stars.
Of the internal relations of molecular bodies little is known even yet, and in the same manner of the internal relations of stellar bodies, but little is yet known. Our ideas of molecular and stellar bodies are largely ideas of their individuality, or as units related to units of the same order, while their constituent units scarcely receive consideration. In the mechanical or molar world the relations of parts are immeasurably more numerous than the parts themselves. Not only are rocks multifarious and the imperfect embodiments of air and water multifarious, but special classes of embodiments are discovered as plants and animals distributed over all the earth in multitudinous kinds with multitudinous relations, and men as molar bodies are related to one another and in all of these relations men are fundamentally interested.