Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/25

Rh By it all moving bodies are set in motion, all motionless bodies held at rest; by it the infinitesimal atom is held an atom and the mass is held concrete, vapory moisture overspreads the land, light and heat animate senseless substance; by it forms of matter change, rocks grow and dissolve, mountains are made and unmade, the ocean heaves and swells, the eternal hills pulsate, the foundations of the deep rise up, and seas displace continents.

One other thing we know, which with the first comprises all our knowledge,—Matter. Now force and matter are interdependent, one cannot exist without the other; as for example, all substance, unless held together—which term obviously implies force—would speedily dissolve into inconceivable nothingness. But no less force is required to annihilate substance than to create it; force, therefore, is alike necessary to the existence or non-existence of matter, which reduces the idea of a possible absence of either force or matter to an absurdity; or, in other words, it is impossible for the human mind to conceive of a state of things wherein there is no matter, and consequently no force.

Force has been called the soul of nature, and matter the body, for by force matter lives and moves and has its being.

Force like matter, is divisible, infinitely so, as far as human experience goes; for, though ultimates may exist, they have never yet been reached; and it would seem that all physical phenomena, endlessly varied and bewildering as they may appear, spring from a few simple incomprehensible forces, the bases of which are attraction and repulsion; which may yet, indeed, derive their origin from One Only Source. In the morphological and geometrical displays of matter these phenomena assume a multitude of phases; all are interactive and interdependent, few are original or primary,—for example, heat and electricity are the offspring of motion which is the result of attractive and repulsive force.