PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S REALISM.
[To rat BOMB or Tar Eirscrrroa.1 Sin,—With reference to the latter part of your reply, in the Spectator of February 5th, to Professor Huxley's article in the current Nineteenth Century, " Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism," I would beg to point oat, if you can afford me the space, the following as an illustration and confirmation of your contention.
Professor Huxley objects to the language of the distinguished preacher referred to, that it implies that a law of Nature is "a thing endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which the phenomena expressed by that law are brought about." He says that "a law of Nature in the scientific sense is the product of a mental operation upon the facts of Nature which come under our observation, and that the law of gravitation is a statement of the manner in which experience shows that bodies which are free to move, do in fact move towards each other." Now, distinguished persons of his line of thought most con- sistently say the very same of energy in the scientific sense. Energy, though not a law of Nature, is, as Clifford said, a mental construction from phenomena and their relations, as much as any law of Nature. The authors of "The Unseen Universe" have been strongly objected to by Clifford and others for contending that the conservation of energy involves its objectivity. Bnt in the very next paragraph to that now. referred to, in Professor Huxley's article, p. 199, he mentions energy as though it were objective, for he speaks of it in two places as " working." Now, if he takes leave to speak of the mental construction energy as though it were an agent, how can he refuse a similar license to the preacher in question P I am convinced that neither one nor the other intends his words to be taken too literally.—I am, Sir, Icc., University Club, Dublin, February 8th. M. H. Cross.
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