To Mr. Abbot.

Cambridge, June 26, 1865.

I trust you will not consider the long time I have allowed to pass before responding to your friendly challenge to a philosophical tournament, as any indication of hesitation or unwillingness on my part to undertake the correspondence you propose. I had much rather you would regard it as time required to consider the difficult problems, — involving, as they do, so many knotty points and grounds of diverse opinions; but in fact the time has not been so employed. I have had few opportunities and fewer occasions of inspiration; and nothing but comparative leisure at present and a desire to express the pleasure and gratification I received from your letter and your request for further correspondence, excuses the present attempt to respond to them.

The clear summary which you give of your argument for the infinity of space, and the questions which you propose as containing the chief issues between us, help me to bring my thoughts at once to the discussion. You ask first, “What is the origin of the idea of space simply considered, as the absolute correlate and condition of matter irrespective of its infinity?” In answer, I propose to give, as briefly as I can, the empiricist’s interpretation of the admitted facts of space, and his explanation of what he conceives to be the origin of the idea. “The idea of space as the necessary and absolute condition of matter,” as “the receptacle of matter, without which as an extended object it could not exist,” includes, it seems to me, a confusion of two distinct propositions, on the discrimination of which the empiricist bases his criticism of the absolutist’s philosophy. He denies that any necessity is cognizable except the necessities of thought; and he would consequently say of the idea of space, that though it is necessary to the representation of matter as an object of

thought, yet it cannot be known as the necessary and absolute condition of matter per se or as underlying noumenal existence. Things and their relations known as phenomena, and their laws, include all that is known to us, except bare existence. Space and Time, distinctly known by abstraction and generalization, are none the less relations of things, merely because they are the absolute conditions [of thinking] of things; the conditio sine qua non of their existence [to us]. And there is not any true or unavoidable antithesis between “abstractions, generalizations, or relations,” and the “absolute correlates of things,” as thought. Relations may be necessary as well as contingent; and because things cannot be conceived out of certain relations, it does not follow that these relations have any other existence than in the things in which they are cognized. To postulate the order, which experience determines in our thinking, as also the order of ontological dependence, is to assume at once and without adequate discussion the position against which the empiricist protests.

The conception of Time and Space as primarily any other than those relations which are universal in our experience of things comes from confounding the truly abstract Time and Space with their abstract representations. I mean by abstract representation the imaging in the phantasy of as few of the propertied and relations of sensible objects as can be represented, excluding or leaving in the background all else. Such syntheses of all the relations necessary to the conception of things in general give the abstract ideas of space as the “receptacle of matter” and of time as the continuum of events. These are not primary intuitions, but constructive synthetic representations made up of the elementary abstract relations of things and events. What we really and immediately know are phenomena — objects and events—with their relations. Proceeding to know them better and better, we first class

them by the ultimate and truly unanalyzable principle of “likeness and unlikeness.” Resemblances and differences of all degrees are cognized, and those phenomena in which resemblance is as perfect as is consistent with their plurality are still found to differ in what we call Space and Time; and this is all we ultimately know of space and time. They are the abstract genera of differences which exist between all phenomena as plural, however great resemblances they may have. An identical object is known by phenomena differing in time only. The universality of the relations of space and time in our experience, and their consequent necessity in our thoughts, united with the notion of identity in an object, gives the notion of continuity of existence both in space and time. We are not immediately cognizant of this continuity as such. What we know are discrete phenomena and their relations of resemblance and difference.

I do not believe that Space and Time are pure hypotheses posited to account for the relations of phenomena. I think they are really cognized as ultimate differences in phenomena; but the continuities of Space and Time must either be of the nature of hypotheses, or else I think we must grant your position of a faculty above sense and understanding capable of cognizing them. As hypotheses and as the only hypotheses we can form to account for or rationalize our experiences, they may be regarded as truly necessary to thought and universal, like the relations on which they are founded.

That time continues between any two events, and that space extends between any two objects cognized by us is inferred as being simply necessary to thought, since we cannot imagine any quantitative difference which is not divisible nor any parts which are not different in space and time. The relations of space and time are intuitions of sense; but as receptacle and continuum, or as conditions of these relations, they are hypotheses. The conception of continuity involves that of quantity,

which I think is primarily cognized as a relation of the relations of time and space — and, I may add, of intension in sensation or power. Two events are conceived quantitatively as separated by other events or the possibility of other events which still differ in time. And similarly of objects in space and of sensations. Objects, events, and feelings are related in space, time, and power, and these are related in quantity. Out of the vague apprehension of quantitative relations in these, we form precise abstract conceptions of quantity, which we cannot however separate entirely from these relations. We have therefore three species of quantity, — quantity in space, time and degree.

But you may object that a rationalizing hypothesis, which, you will say, is not, and cannot be, given by sense or understanding, must come from a faculty above these, which is also the source of the validity of the hypothesis; but I contend that so far as such an hypothesis is apprehended at all, and so far as it has any validity, it is apprehended and vouched for by understanding and sense. The process is perfectly analogous to the formation of general ideas, which it is now admitted on all hands cannot be apprehended by sense or represented in imagination, yet is the proper function of understanding dealing with the data of experience. In the same way, the hypothesis of a receptacle or continuum, so far as it is apprehended at all, is apprehended in and through the relations of the phenomena which it reduces to rational order. As well contend that mathematical formulas and processes which convey no meaning in themselves, but develop implicit relations of quantity, are given and vouched for by a special faculty, as contend that space — the receptacle — is a distinct datum of intelligence.

The distinction between Space and Extension is thus to my mind only that which subsists between an abstract synthetic hypothesis and the elementary relations which it reduces to

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order and harmony in thought. The latter alone are properly apprehended by any faculty of knowledge. Space is really apprehended in the relations of extension in bodies. All bodies — the whole non-ego of sense, embraced in one intuition, with the exclusion of all which is non-essential to representation in general, gives us the space of imagination. Rational space is that which is essential to clear, distinct, and rational thought, or is necessary to understanding. It excludes color and tangible properties, and includes the hypothesis of continuity. Sense by itself does not give continuity, but at the same time does not exclude it. All the data of sense are in accordance with it; and hence they verify or give validity to it, so far as it has validity or is capable of verification. The impossibility of thinking contrary to it, is not regarded by the empiricist as a distinct kind of proof. This only expresses the degree of the proof which experience affords.

I come now to your question concerning the infinity of space. This predication, though it cannot be understood, cannot be denied, since it involves no contradiction. At the same time, it cannot be affirmed as an hypothesis necessary to account for any cognizable fact which is not accounted for by the idea “that space extends beyond our powers of knowing or conceiving it.” What infinite space includes, more than this, is unnecessary, and therefore unwarranted; and it is only by sublating the contradictory proposition, as you propose to do in your proof (p. 94, N. A. Review), that it can be posited.

But what is the contradictory of infinite space as distinguished from indefinite space? Not finite space simply, as you propose in your proof. The truly infinite is the unconditionally unlimited or indefinite, and its contradictory is the unconditionally limited, — not merely the finite, which may be conditionally limited. What you really sublate in your proof

is only the conditionally limited as predicated of abstract space. You say: “For suppose it [space] limited, it must be limited either by matter or by vacuity [that is in either case conditionally limited]; but Space is presupposed by matter, and is itself, in the absence of matter, vacuity, consequently, &c.”

But this dilemma does not include an alternative which is the real contradictory of infinite space. Unconditionally limited space is neither limited by other space nor by matter, but per se or by itself. This is inconceivable, of course, — obtrusively and staggeringly so; but it does not involve any logical contradiction, and is not therefore repugnant to reason any more than its equally inconceivable contradictory, infinite space.

Since therefore I must disallow your demonstration of infinity, I come to your third question, “What is the reason why the infinity of space is a less obtrusive and staggering inconceivability than its [absolute] finitude?”

The clause following the words you quote from my letter, though connected only by an “and,” contains the reason. I should have said that “we finally rest on unlimited space as the least obtrusive and staggering inconceivability, [since it is] the one for which we can most easily substitute a. pseud representation, namely, an indefinitely great extension.” The suffering senses are quieter, but the understanding is still frustrated. æsthetic considerations — or perhaps I should say anæsthetic considerations — decide, where reason is balanced. The decision is the other way — and for the same reason — in the case of the infinite and absolute of causation. An absolute beginning is preferable to an infinite non-beginning, because we can easily substitute for it a pseud representation; namely, a beginning in knowledge or in consciousness, such as, in the case of our own volitions, seem like new

creations, self-determined. This satisfies sense and imagination by deceiving them, but the understanding is still baffled.

Infinite space, as an hypothesis to account for any thing of which we are truly cognizant, not only transcends our powers of conception, but also the necessities of thought. A simpler hypothesis is competent to do all that it can do. We need only space which includes all that we can know, and extends beyond our powers of knowing or conceiving it.

The infinite and absolute are therefore both inconceivable and incognizable by us in the relations of space and time. How much more so out of relation to these! The Infinite and Absolute of pure Being, transcending time, space, and phenomena, are only names to us, but names which, nevertheless, as mutually contradictory, says Hamilton, stand, either the one or the other, for an inconceivable reality. This which is Hamilton’s peculiar doctrine is to my mind the weakest point in his argument. As an empiricist, he was not competent to draw such a conclusion. He was not, however, a thorough-going empiricist; and he can be convicted of inconsistency, if it be showing that he was not competent to affirm for the laws of thought an absolute validity independently of experience, while he denied any such thing as an absolute knowledge.

I imagine that this is the flaw which Mr. Mill has discovered; but as I have not yet read Mill, and do not know what his line of argument is, I set down this anticipation at a venture.

I hope that my argument will not prove unanswerable, and that I may hear from you at your earliest leisure.

During these years, Chauncey had grown intimate with the family of Mr. Norton. I am able to give some account of his acquaintance with them from the pen of Mr. Norton himself. He says: —

“I first heard of Chauncey Wright in 1857, soon after returning to Cambridge from a two years’ absence in Europe. The ‘Atlantic Monthly’ was just established; and Mr. Lowell, its first editor, printed in one of the early numbers Vol. I. p. 272, January, 1858. ⁴² a striking and interesting paper by Wright, called ‘The Winds and the Weather.’ I remember that Mr. Lowell spoke to me of it in high terms of praise, and told me of the modesty and shyness of the writer, and of his apparent promise as a scientific thinker. I heard of him occasionally from other friends; but some time passed before we met. In the winter of 1858 or 1859, a little club of men of various interests was started in Cambridge, and I think I first saw Wright at one of its meetings. He was generally very silent; but, when he spoke, his words were to the point and worth listening to. We did not meet often, but our acquaintance slowly ripened into friendship; and when, in the autumn of 1863, Mr. Lowell and I became editors of the ‘ North American Review,’ Wright was one of the men whom we both desired to engage as a contributor to its pages. In the winter of 1864, I saw much of him; and he began to be a frequent visitor at my house. At first, except when alone with me, his shyness made him silent, and gave him the appearance of reserve; but this gradually wore off, and he became before long an easy and familiar friend with all the members of the household. His mode of work by continuous stretches, with intervals between them of freedom from regular occupation, gave him leisure during those intervals for frequent walks with my wife, my sisters, or myself, and for loitering days, spent in winter in the parlor or my study, and in summer on the piazza or the grass. During these days, he shared in the common domestic interests, — in talk or reading, in the amusements of the children, in discussion of affairs, of characters, of education,

of the conduct of life, &c.; was full of ready sympathy in small concerns, of wise suggestion and service in important matters.”