Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/43

Rh He anticipated Laplace by more than thirty years in the discovery that the planets and planetary motion are derived from the sun; and while his hypothesis differs essentially from that of Laplace, it is experimentally illustrated by De Plateau's celebrated experiment of a rotating fluid mass relieved from the action of gravity.

He also discovered the animation of the brain; its coincidence during formation with the systole and diastole of the heart, and, after birth, with the respiration of the lungs; and, incidental to this, the universal motion generated by the lungs and distributed to the whole animal machine.

It is now a well recognized law of physical science, that Action and Reaction are equal, simultaneous and contrary. Prof. Bartlett, late of the United States Military Academy at West Point, nearly a quarter of a century ago, used the above law expressed in a single formula, from which he derived all the consequences of the action of force upon matter. He says (referring to its introduction in 1856):