Page:Truth and Error (1898).djvu/37

 reduced to spaces and spaces to numbers, all giving an inconceivably great number of relations. But there are no motions without particles in motion, and there are no speeds without particles having speed, and there are no trajectories without particles having trajectories. There is no path without a particle having the essentials of a particle.

The science of the mathematics of motion deals with the speed of one and its trajectory, the speed of another and its trajectory, and of their collisions, and for this purpose it has to deal with the measure of their relations, and forever relation is considered and thus an illusion is sometimes produced, when motion itself seems to be wholly relation. Every particle of matter is in motion, and while this motion is absolute it is also relative. There can be nothing relative which is not also absolute, nor can there be anything absolute which is not also relative, and motion being thus absolute and relative it is quite proper to affirm this of motion, but it is not correct to affirm that motion is a relation any more than it is correct to affirm that motion is an absolute, if by these assertions it is implied that motion is one rather than the other; but if these assertions are made with regard to one correlative implying the other, then they are both correct. It is better form of speech to say that motion is absolute or relative when it is desired to call attention to one factor or the other, rather than to say that motion is an absolute or a relation.

The motion of particles is of such a nature that paths must impinge, and then collisions arise which give rise to impulse, or collision by which paths are deflected.

As bodies are incorporated in molecules of higher