Part 10 (1/2)
Better for us, perhaps, it ht appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here; That never air or ocean felt the wind; That never passion discomposed the mind
But =all= subsists by elemental strife; And passions are the elean, Is kept in nature, and is kept in man
Look round our world, behold the chain of love
Co to this end, The single atoms each to other tend; Attract, attracted to, the next in place Forhbor to embrace, See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one center still the gen'ral good
See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving, vegetate again; All forms that perish, other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die) Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return, Nothing is foreign--parts relate to whole; One all-extending, all-preserving soul Connects each being greatest with the least; Made beast in aid ofstands alone; The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown
But _power_ alone is not sufficient to produce action There must be a =cause= to call it forth, to set in operation and exhibit its latent energies It will remain hid in its secret chambers till efficient causes have set in operation the _means_ by which its existence is to be discovered in the production of change, effects, or results There is, it is said, in every created thing a power sufficient to produce its own destruction, as well as to preserve its being In the human body, for instance, there is a constant tendency to decay, to waste; which a counteracting power resists, and, with proper assistance, keeps alive
The sa off, or exhaling the waste, offensive, or uselesspower, assisted by heat, moisture, and the nourishment of the earth, resists the tendency to decay and preserves it alive and growing The air, the earth, nay, the ocean itself, philosophers assure us, contain powers sufficient to self-destruction But I will not enlarge here Let the necessary _cause_ be exerted which will give vent to this hidden power and actions theand destructive would be the effect These are often witnessed in the tremendous earthquakes which devastate whole cities, states, and eenius of evil, over the land, levelling whatever is found in its course; or in the waterspouts and rave of all that corasp
In the atteland, by what is usually called the ”gunpowder plot,” the arrangesheads and thirty-six barrels of powder, sufficient to blow up the house of lords and the surrounding buildings, were secreted in a vault beneath it, strown over with faggots Guy Fawkes, a spanish officer, employed for the purpose, lay at the door, on the 5th of November, 1605, with the matches, or _means_, in his pocket, which should set in operation the prodigious dormant _power_, which would hurl to destruction Jaive the ascendancy to the Catholics, and change the whole political condition of the nation The _project_ was discovered, the _means_ were removed, the _cause_ taken away, and the threatened _effects_ were prevented
The =cause= of action is the immediate subject which precedes or tends to produce the action, without which it would not take place It may result from volition, inherent tendency, or communicated impulse; and is known to exist from the effects produced by it, in the altered or new condition of the thing on which it operates; which change would not have been effected without it
Causes are to be sought for by tracing back thro the effects which are produced by them The factory is put in operation, and the cloth isand see the spindles, looo away satisfied that he has seen enough, seen all But the more careful will look farther He will trace each band and wheel, each cog and shaft, down by the balance power, to the water race and flooine to the piston, condenser, water, wood, and fire;a new,step But all this curiously wrought machinery is not the product of chance, operated without care A superior cause enuity of man Every contrivance presupposes a contriver Hence there ulate the power of the water, or generate and direct the steam That power is vested in man; and hence, man stands as the cause, in relation to the whole process operated by wheels, bands, spindles, and looms Yet we may say, with propriety, that the water, or the steas, pullies, spindles, springs, treddles, harnesses, reeds, shuttles, an almost endless concatenation of instruments, are alike the _causes_, which tend to produce the final result; for let one of these intermediate causes be reo wrong--the effect will not be produced
There must be a =first cause= to set in operation all inferior ones in the production of action; and to that _first_ cause all action, nay, the existence of all other causes, may be traced, directly, orcauses, in the consecutive order of things, may be as diversified as the links in the chain of variant beings Yet all these causes are ency of the Als; who spoke into existence the universe with all its various and complicated parts and orders; who set the sun, ave the earth a place, and fixed the sea a bed; throwing around theht of his eternal throne, his eye pervades all his works; froel, that ”adores and burns,” down to the very hairs of our heads, which are all numbered, his wise, benevolent, and powerful supervision ible lines, which may be seen and read of all men And from effects, the most diminutive in character, may be traced back, fro, to the same unrivalled Source of all power, splendor, and perfection, the presence of Him, who spake, and it was done; who commanded, and it _stood still_; or, as the poet has it:
”Look thro nature up to nature's God”
The _means_ of action are those aids which are displayed as thecauses are to exhibit their hidden powers in producing changes or effects The matches in the pocket of Guy Faere the direct means by which he intended to set in operation a train of causes which should terminate in the destruction of the house of lords and all its inmates Those ots, and thence to the powder, and means after means, and cause after cause, in the rapid succession of events, would ensue, tending to a final, inevitable, and melancholy result
A ball shot from a cannon, receives its first impulse from the powder; but it is borne thro the air by the aid of a principle inherent in itself, which power is finally overcoress, and the law of gravitation finally attracts it to the earth These contending principlesthe curved line in which the ball moves from the cannon's mouth to the spot where it rests But if there is no power in the ball, why does not the ball of cork discharged froun with the same momentum, travel to the same distance, at the same rate? The action commences in both cases with the same projectile force, the same exterior _means_ are employed, but the results are widely different The cause of this difference ht for in the comparative power of each substance to _continue its own movements_
Every boy who has played at ball has observed these principles He throws his ball, which, if not _counteracted_, will continue in a straight line, _ad infinituravitation brings it to the ground When he throws it against a hard substance, its velocity is not only overcoreat force But if he takes a ball of wax, of snow, or any strong adhesive substance, it will not bound How shall we account to him for this difference? He did the sareat as the other, and the resistance of the intervening substance was as great in one case as the other; and yet, one bounds and rebounds, while the other sticks fast as a friend, to the first object it ht for in the different capabilities of the respective balls One possesses a strong elastic and repelling power; in the other, the attraction of cohesion is predominant
Take another example Let two substances of equal size and form, the one made of lead, the other of cork, be put upon the surface of a cistern of water The external circumstances are the same, but the effects are widely different--one sinks, the other floats We must look for the cause of this difference, not in the opposite qualities of surrounding s themselves If you add to the cork another quality possessed by the lead, and give it the saht_, it will as readily sink to the bottorees by the two bodies, and hence, while the one floats upon the water, the other displaces its particles and sinks to the bottom You may take another substance; say the hter than lead, and immerse it in the water; it will not sink with the rapidity of lead, because its inherent _power_ is not so strong
Take still another case Let two balls, suspended on strings, be equally, or, to use the technical ter them within a certain distance, and they will repel each other Let the electric fluid be extracted from one, and the other will attract it
Before, they were as enenet furnishes theto establish Let one of sufficient power be let doithin the proper distance, it will overcoravitation, and _attract_ the heavy steel to itself What is the cause of this wonderful fact? Who can account for it? Who can trace out the hidden cause; the ”_pri of motion? But ill dare deny that such effects do exist, and that they are produced by an efficient cause? Or ill descend into the still rammars, and deny that matter has such a power to act?
These instances will suffice to show you eto the ability God has given it to act_ I o into a more minute exaht, size, color, forrammars will allow it to _possess_; but I shall leave that work for you to perfor in reference to the abilities of all things to _produce_, _continue_, or _prevent_ motion, will do well to consult the prince of philosophers, Sir Isaac Newton, who, after Gallileo, has treated largely upon the laws of motion He asserts as a fact, full in illustration of the principles I a a hill, the trace rope pulls the horse back as much as he draws that forward, only the horse overcomes the resistance of the load, and moves it up the hill On the old systems, no poould be requisite to move the load, for it could oppose no resistance to the horse; and the s team
Who has not an acquaintance sufficiently extensive to know these things?
I can not believe there is a person present, who does not fully coround I have assumed And it should be borne in ement of words can be co fros as they exist and operate in the material and intellectual world, and that it is not in the power of man to frame a sentence, to think or speak, but in conforeneral and exceptionless laws
This i step, as if to ade of language without an acquaintance with the great principles on which it depends To look for the leading rules of speech in set forms of expression, or in the capricious customs of any nation, however learned, is as futile as to atte ourselves up in a roos which may be furnished by those who know as little of it as we do How fallacious would be the attempt, how much worse than time throay, for the parent to shut up his child in a lonely rooe of man, beasts, birds, fish, insects, rivers, mountains, fields, flowers, houses, cities, &c, with no other aid than a few miserable pictures, unlike the reality, and in many respects contradictory to each other And yet that would be adopting a course very si a knowledge of language; limited to a set of arbitrary, false, and contradictory rules, which the brightest geniuses could never understand, nor the raht, e, and yet they were forgotten before such knowledge was put in practice
A simple remark on the principles of _relative_ action, and ill pass to the consideration of _agents_ and _objects_, or the o forth at the evening hour and look upon the sun _sinking_ beneath the horizon; we e, and fade away We see the shades of night _approaching_, with a gradual pace, till the beautiful landscape on which we had been gazing, the hills and the rove, the orchard, and the garden; the tranquil lake and the babbling brook; the dairy returning ho beside their daer