Part 7 (2/2)

The forces on one given screw, With motion on a second, In general some work will do, Whose magnitude is reckoned By angle, force, and what we call The coefficient virtual.

Rotation now to force convert, And force into rotation; Unchanged the work, we can a.s.sert, In spite of transformation.

And if two screws no work can claim, Reciprocal will be their name.

Five numbers will a screw define, A s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g motion, six; For four will give the axial line, One more the pitch will fix; And hence we always can contrive One screw reciprocal to five.

Screws--two, three, four or five, combined (No question here of six), Yield other screws which are confined Within one screw complex.

Thus we obtain the clearest notion Of freedom and constraint of motion.

In complex III., three several screws At every point you find, Or if you one direction choose, One screw is to your mind; And complexes of order III.

Their own reciprocals may be.

In IV., wherever you arrive, You find of screws a cone, On every line in complex V.

There is precisely one; At each point of this complex rich, A plane of screws have given pitch.

But time would fail me to discourse Of Order and Degree; Of Impulse, Energy and Force, And Reciprocity.

All these and more, for motions small, Have been discussed by Dr. Ball.

_Anonymous_.

MOORLANDS OF THE NOT

Across the moorlands of the Not We chase the gruesome When; And hunt the Itness of the What Through forests of the Then.

Into the Inner Consciousness We track the crafty Where; We spear the Ego tough, and beard The Selfhood in his lair.

With la.s.sos of the brain we catch The Isness of the Was; And in the copses of the Whence We hear the think bees buzz.

We climb the slippery Whichbark tree To watch the Thusness roll And pause betimes in gnostic rimes To woo the Over Soul.

_Anonymous_.

METAPHYSICS

Why and Wherefore set out one day To hunt for a wild Negation.

They agreed to meet at a cool retreat On the Point of Interrogation.

But the night was dark and they missed their mark, And, driven well-nigh to distraction, They lost their ways in a murky maze Of utter abstruse abstraction.

Then they took a boat and were soon afloat On a sea of Speculation, But the sea grew rough, and their boat, though tough, Was split into an Equation.

As they floundered about in the waves of doubt Rose a fearful Hypothesis, Who gibbered with glee as they sank in the sea, And the last they saw was this:

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