Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/147

 each minutest entity—the living activity being manifested in inconceivably minute and rapid vibrations, or tremulations—a theory wonderfully verified in our own day, though our physicists do not yet connect the life of matter with its Source.

Yet a notable recognition of similar import in our day is that of our greatest mathematician, Professor Benjamin Pierce, who stated in the introduction to his Analytic Mechanics—

"1. Motion is an essential element of all physical phenomena; and its introduction into the universe of matter was necessarily the preliminary act of creation. The earth must have remained forever 'without form, and void,' and eternal darkness must have been upon the face of the deep, if the spirit of God had not first 'moved upon the face of the waters.'

"2. Motion appears to be the simplest manifestation of power, and the idea of force seems to be primitively derived from the conscious effort which is required to produce motion. Force may, then, be regarded as having a spiritual origin, and when it is imparted to the physical world, motion is its usual form of mechanical exhibition.