[5] Boyle has some ingenious speculations on this point:—
“That there is local motion in many parts of matter is manifest to sense, but how matter came by this motion was of old, and is still, hotly disputed of: for the ancient Corpuscularian philosophers (whose doctrine in most other points, though not in all, we are the most inclinable to), not acknowledging an author of the universe, were thereby reduced to make motion congenite to matter, and consequently coeval with it. But since local motion, or an endeavour at it, is not included in the nature of matter, which is as much matter when it rests as when it moves; and since we see that the same portion of matter may from motion be reduced to rest, and after it hath continued at rest, so long as other bodies do not put it out of that state, may by external agents be set a moving again; I, who am not wont to think a man the worse naturalist for not being an atheist, shall not scruple to say with an eminent philosopher of old, whom I find to have proposed among the Greeks that opinion (for the main) that the excellent Des Cartes has revived amongst us, that the origin of motion in matter is from God; and not only so, but that thinking it very unfit to be believed, that matter barely put into motion, and then left to itself, should casually constitute this beautiful and orderly world; I think also further, that the wise Author of things did, by establishing the laws of motion among bodies, and by guiding the first motions of the small parts of matter, bring them to convene after the manner requisite to compose the world; and especially did contrive those curious and elaborate engines, the bodies of living creatures, endowing most of them with the power of propagating their species.”—Considerations and Experiments touching the Origin of Forms and Qualities: Boyle’s Works, vol. ii. p. 460. Edinburgh. 1744.
[6] Cudworth’s Intellectual System.
[7] “According to the Pythagoreans and Platonists, there is a life infused throughout all things ... an intellectual and artificial fire—an inward principle, animal spirit, or natural life, producing or forming within, as art doth without—regulating, moderating, and reconciling the various motions, qualities, and parts of the mundane system. By virtue of this life, the great masses are held together in their ordinary courses, as well as the minutest particles governed in their natural motions, according to the several laws of attraction, gravity, electricity, magnetism, and the rest. It is this gives instincts, teaches the spider her web, and the bee her honey;—this it is that directs the roots of plants to draw forth juice from the earth, and the leaves and the cortical vessels to separate and attract such particles of air and elementary fire as suit their respective natures.”—Bishop Berkeley, Siris, No. 277.
[8] “The revolution of the earth is performed in a natural day, or, more strictly speaking, once in 23h. 56' 4", and as its mean circumference is 24,871 miles, it follows that any point in its equatorial surface has a rotatory motion of more than 1,000 miles per hour. This velocity must gradually diminish to nothing at either pole. Whilst the earth is thus revolving on its axis, it has a progressive motion in its orbit. If we take the length of the earth’s orbit at 630,000,000, its motion through space must exceed 68,490 miles in the hour.”—Enc. Brit. art. Physical Geography.
[9] “Here then we have the splendid result of the united studies of MM. Argelander, O. Struve, and Peters, grounded on observations made at the three observatories of Dorpat, Abo, Pulkova, and which is expressed in the following thesis:—The motion of the solar system in space is directed to a point of the celestial vault situated on the right line which joins the two stars π and μ Herculis, at a quarter of the apparent distance of these stars, reckoning from π Herculis. The velocity of this motion is such, that the sun, with all the bodies which depend upon it, advances annually in the above direction 1·623 times the radius of the earth’s orbit, or 33,550,000 geographical miles. The possible error of this last number amounts to 1,733,000 geographical miles, or to a seventh of the whole value. We may then wager 400,000 to 1 that the sun has a proper progressive motion, and 1 to 1 that it is comprised between the limits of thirty-eight and twenty-nine millions of geographical miles.”—Etudes d’Astronomie Stellaire: Sur la Voie Lactée et sur les Distances des Etoiles Fixes: M. F. W. G. Struve. [A report addressed to his Excellency M. Le Comte Ouvaroff; Minister of Public Instruction and President of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg.]
[10] “The first great agent which the analysis of natural phenomena offers to our consideration, more frequently and prominently than any other, is force. Its effects are either, 1st, to counteract the exertion of opposing force, and thereby to maintain equilibrium; or, 2ndly, to produce motion in matter,
“Matter, or that whatever it be of which all the objects in nature which manifest themselves directly to our senses consist, presents us with two general qualities, which at first sight appear to stand in contradiction to each other—activity and inertness. Its activity is proved by its power of spontaneously setting other matter in motion, and of itself obeying their mutual impulse, and moving under the influence of its own and other force; inertness, in refusing to move unless obliged to do so by a force impressed externally, or mutually exerted between itself and other matter, and by persisting in its state of motion or rest unless disturbed by some external cause. Yet, in reality, this contradiction is only apparent. Force being the cause, and motion the effect produced by it on matter, to say that matter is inert, or has inertia, as it is termed, is only to say that the cause is expended in producing its effect, and that the same cause cannot (without renewal) produce double or triple its own proper effect. In this point of view, equilibrium may be conceived as a continual production of two opposite effects, each, undoing at every instant what the other has done,”?—See continuation of the argument in Herschel’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, page 223.
In the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xlv., will be found a paper by Dr Robert Brown—“Of the sources of motions upon the Earth, and of the means by which they are sustained,” which will well repay an attentive perusal, as pointing to a class of investigation of the highest order, and containing deductions of the most philosophic description.
[11] Friction, it is well known, generates heat; by rapidly rubbing two sticks together, the Indian produces their ignition; heat and light being both manifested. Under every mechanical disturbance electrical changes can be detected, and the action of heat in the combustion of the wood is a chemical phenomenon.