Part 24 (2/2)

Very slowly the accretion of these new forces, cherew in volume until they acquired sufficient ious science, substituting their attraction for the attractions of the Civitas Dei, but the process remained the same Nature, not mind, did the work that the sun does on the planets

Man depended more and more absolutely on forces other than his own, and on instruments which superseded his senses Bacon foretold it: ”Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can effect much

It is by instruments and helps that the work is done” Once done, the ot its impotence; but no one better than Bacon knew its tricks, and for his true followers science always meant self-restraint, obedience, sensitiveness to iitandum sed inveniendum quid Natura faciat aut ferat”

The success of this ers belief, and even to-day can be treated by history only as a rowth, like the sports of nature Evidently a new variety of mind had appeared Certain men merely held out their hands--like Newton, watched an apple; like Franklin, flew a kite; like Watt, played with a tea-kettle--and great forces of nature stuck to the ball

Governunpowder and ordnance, the great weapon of government, showed little development between 1400 and 1800 Society was hostile or indifferent, as Priestley and Jenner, and even Fulton, with reason complained in the most advanced societies in the world, while its resistance became acute wherever the Church held control; until all roups, dragged on by an attractive power in advance, which even the leaders obeyed without understanding, as the planets obeyed gravity, or the trees obeyed heat and light

The influx of new force was nearly spontaneous The reaction of reater than that of a comet on the sun; and had the spontaneous influx of force stopped in Europe, society one backward, as in Asia or Africa

Then only economies of process would have counted as new force, and society would have been better pleased; for the idea that new force etable instinct As Nature developed her hidden energies, they tended to beco reluctantly, iht had always been movement of inertia, and mostly mere sentiment; but even the processes of mathematics measured feebly the needs of force

The stupendous acceleration after 1800 ended in 1900 with the appearance of the new class of supersensual forces, before which the man of science stood at first as bewildered and helpless as, in the fourth century, a priest of Isis before the Cross of Christ

This, then, or so like this, would be a dynah to object at once that it is the oldest and y and philosophy, have always preached it, differing only in the alloty between nature and y has been called God or Nature, the ed to decide whether the Ultiy is one or many Every one admits that the will is a free force, habitually decided by motives No one denies that h it may not always be conscious of them Science has proved that forces, sensible and occult, physical and metaphysical, simple and complex, surround, traverse, vibrate, rotate, repel, attract, without stop; that ree; but that, froanic existence, his consciousness has been induced, expanded, trained in the lines of his sensitiveness; and that the rise of his faculties froher, or from a narrower to a wider field,outside force or forces There is nothing unscientific in the idea that, beyond the lines of force felt by the senses, the universe may be--as it has always been--either a supersensuous chaos or a divine unity, which irresistibly attracts, and is either life or death to penetrate Thus far, religion, philosophy, and science seein their vital battle only there In the earlier stages of progress, the forces to be assimilated were sied its range, it enlarged the field of complexity, and must continue to do so, even into chaos, until the reservoirs of sensuous or supersensuous energies are exhausted, or cease to affect him, or until he succurouping its sequences h any serious student would need to invent another, to compare or correct its errors; but past history is only a value of relation to the future, and this value is wholly one of convenience, which can be tested only by experiment Any law of movement must include, to make it a convenience, some mechanical formula of acceleration

CHAPTER xxxIV

A LAW OF ACCELERATION (1904)

IMAGES are not arguments, rarely even lead to proof, but the mind craves them, and, of late es better than one, especially if contradictory; since the human mind has already learned to deal in contradictions

The i mass, artificially introduced on earth in the midst of a system of attractive forces that previously made their own equilibrium, and constantly induced to accelerate its motion till it shall establish a new equilibriu that all history, terrestrial or cosmic, mechanical or intellectual, would be reducible to this formula if we knew the facts

For convenience, the e should come first; and this is probably that of the comet, or meteoric streams, like the Leonids and Perseids; a co within and without, and guided by the su forbids one to assurow, as an acorn does, absorbing light, heat, electricity--or thought; for, in recent tiy has becoure, at first, is that of a perfect coht line, at the regular acceleration of speed, directly into the sun, and after wheeling sharply about it, in heat that ought to dissipate any known substance, turns back unharmed, in defiance of law, by the path on which it caure as such a comet, the better because it also defies law

Motion is the ultimate object of science, and ht as with matter, the true measure is mass in its astronomic sense--the suh trouble inhelp to the historian, but the historian needs not much help to measure some kinds of social movement; and especially in the nineteenth century, society by coress by the coal-output The ratio of increase in the volume of coal-power may serve as dynahly, doubled every ten years between 1840 and 1900, in the form of utilized power, for the ton of coal yielded three or four times as much power in 1900 as in 1840 Rapid as this rate of acceleration in volureatly reducing it Perhaps the ocean steaht hire, in 1905, for a small sum of money, the use of 30,000 steaure every ten years, he got back to 234 horse-power for 1835, which was accuracy enough for his purposes In truth, his chief trouble came not from the ratio in voluet no basis for a ratio there All ages of history have known high intensities, like the iron-furnace, the burning-glass, the blow-pipe; but no society has ever used high intensities on any large scale till now, nor can a e of te that science controls habitually the whole range froht assume, for convenience, that the ten-year ratio for volume could be used temporarily for intensity; and still there reuessed for other forces than heat Since 1800 scores of new forces had been discovered; old forces had been raised to higher powers, as could be ions of cheions of physics Within ten years a new universe of force had been revealed in radiation Complexity had extended itself on immense horizons, and arithmetical ratios were useless for any attempt at accuracy The force evolved seeravitation, and followed closely the curve of steam; but, at all events, the ten-year ratio seemed carefully conservative

Unless the calculator was prepared to be instantly overwhelmed by physical force andthe year 1900 as the starting point for carrying back the series, nothing was easier than to assume a ten-year period of retardation as far back as 1820, but beyond that point the statistician failed, and only the mathematician could help Laplace would have found it child's-play to fix a ratio of progression in mathematical science between Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton, and hiiven in pounds the increase of power between Newcoines and his own

Volta and Benjaress as absolute creation of power Dalton could have measured minutely his advance on Boerhaave Napoleon I must have had a distinct notion of his own nuress of force, least of all those ere to lose their heads by it

Pending agreement between these authorities, theory may assume what it likes--say a fifty, or even a five-and-twenty-year period of reduplication for the eighteenth century, for the period matters little until the acceleration itself is ad in the seventeenth than in the eighteenth century, because Galileo and Kepler, Descartes, Huygens, and Isaac Newton took vast pains to fix the laws of acceleration forbodies, while Lord Bacon and Willia experie; but froht be tempted to maintain a similar rate of movement back to 1600, subject to correction froht carry their calculations back as far as the fourteenth century when algebra seems to have becoress in western Europe; for not only Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, but even artists like Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Albert Durer worked by ive results ne or Shakespeare; but, to save trouble, one ht tentatively carry back the same ratio of acceleration, or retardation, to the year 1400, with the help of Colu the whole four centuries (1400-1800), and leaving to statisticians the task of correcting it

Or better, one ht, for convenience, use the formula of squares to serve for a law of mind Any other formula would do as well, either of cherowth, or of expansion or contraction in innumerable forms; but this happens to be simple and convenient Its force increases in the direct ratio of its squares As the human meteoroid approached the sun or centre of attractive force, the attraction of one century squared itself to give the measure of attraction in the next

Behind the year 1400, the process certainly went on, but the progress becaained in the east or elsewhere, cannot be known; but forces, called loosely Greek fire and gunpowder, came into use in the west in the thirteenth century, as well as instruments like the compass, the blow-pipe, clocks and spectacles, and ebra were introduced, while y acted as violent stiht detect a sequence between the Church of St Peter's at Rome, the Amiens Cathedral, the Duomo at Pisa, San Marco at Venice, Sancta Sofia at Constantinople and the churches at Ravenna All the historian dares affirht to carry back his ratio, to represent the fact, without assu body, the break in acceleration in the Middle Ages is only apparent; the attraction worked through shi+fting forravitation, or what not, on different organs with different sensibilities, but with invariable law

The science of prehistoric man has no value except to prove that the laent back into indefinite antiquity A stone arrowhead is as convincing as a steao as now, and extended equally over the whole world

The ht, but cannot be proved to have stopped The ht To evolutionists le interest is the law of reaction between force and force--between reat division of history into phases by Turgot and Co the unity of progress, for a rowth, and nature shows innumerable such phases The development of coal-power in the nineteenth century furnished the firstcloser values to the elements; and the appearance of supersensual forces towards 1900necessity; since the next step became infinitely serious

A law of acceleration, definite and constant as any law of y to suit the convenience of est a theory that man's convenience had been consulted by Nature at any time, or that Nature has consulted the convenience of any of her creations, except perhaps the Terebratula In every age man has bitterly and justly complained that Nature hurried and hustled hiedy Resistance is its law, and resistance to superior mass is futile and fatal