Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/13

Rh it, was the first step out of the indiffererence of matter, the earliest agent in the differentiation. Magnetism, chemical affinity, cohesive force and gravitation she took to be the various manifestations of this one force resident in all matter, whose derivation she would not at that moment consider. She had not been able to find a comprehensive definition of the quality which this word represents, but it seemed to stand for the tendency, universal in nature, of one set of things to one mode of action, and of another to another. The two opposite tendencies resided also in the same thing, at least in bodies of entire homogeneity, which would be simply unity if the two tendencies did not make them two. This principle in matter, of one as to principle and many as to force, is already well known. This active tendency she defined as something distinct from a supposable inertia or indifference, and could only be developed by the rencontre of opposite tendencies. This necessity of opposition is seen in mechanics, whose very initiative presents two postulates of impulse and resistance. The first unfolding of nature supposes a force that necessitates such an unfolding, and a primary condition of reserve unfriendly to it. Preponderance of imparting forces gives movement, which must have been the first evidence of matter. The contention of two opposite inclinations in matter giving two poles of termination, the opposition of the two gives an active tendency in the one and a fixed tendency in the other. These tendencies would result in the circle, but the active pole, which travelling around the passive one to produce the circumference, necessarily generates in the latter a point opposite to that of its first starting, which gives a third pole of antagonism. With the first point, resistance for the centre, the opposite poles of the circle revolving give the sphere, the first solid of revolution. But with the extended area of action the point of resistance must also extend, which it does, to the limit of the circumference in opposite directions. This gives the axis of the sphere, without whose persistence in the function of resistance, it could not move. In this manner the speaker accounted for the first fruits or results that might be called phenomenal; the cause of these results being ideal, a term which in philosophy signifies the conditions that antedate and determine the amounts of resistance which we term natural or moral. Of the ideal cause we can know nothing. The lecturer further elucidated this theory of