The scientific basis of morality Author:George Gore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 4. On Existence And Relation. Of all the millions of millions of different bodies known to exist in the universe, every one must necessarily possess propertie... more »s and relations, and if it did not we could not know of its existence, because it would not have any effect either directly or indirectly upon us, and we would not arrive at a knowledge of its existence by means of our reasoning powers. Each one possesses relations to time, space, motion, and to all known bodies, and not a single well-verified exception to these statements amongst all the vast number has ever been found ; even time and space possess relations. Each substance, by its molecular motion, affects the universal ether, and through it all the other bodies in the universe, and as each different one affects the ether differently, so it influences all other bodies differently; thus a magnet, an electrified body, and a heated substance, act each differently upon all surrounding bodies, and, so far as we know, at all times and in all places. " Every individual object, organic or inorganic, is the product of two factors: first, the relation of its constituent molecules to each other; secondly, the relation of its substance to all surrounding objects" (G. H. Lewes, "The Physical Basis of Mind," 1877, p. 40; see also J. Bayma, " Molecular Mechanics," 1866). All things that exist have been produced by sufficient causes; and all physical realities exhibit phenomena. "To know a thing is to know its relations; it is its relations" (G. H. Lewes, " Problems of Life and Mind," 1874, vol. i, p. 64). Properties and relations constitute our idea of existence; a thing without properties and relations to other things has no being; no substance can exist (or action occur) without being related to time, to space, and to all substanc...« less