Natural law, as automatic mind or unconscious intelligence : read at a meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by Charles Bray.
- Charles Bray
- Date:
- [1877]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Natural law, as automatic mind or unconscious intelligence : read at a meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by Charles Bray. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Now how is it after the discovery of force and its indestruc- tibility that Philosophers of all schools are thus so well able to do without it? This is owing to the imperfection of language and the want of definition, the term “ Force indi- cating a mere abstraction, having no real existence, but standing for the ability or power of the agent of which it is the force. But as motion is inseparable from the thing moving, so is force from this agent. Matter is supposed to be this universal agent by one school, mind by another, but both matter and mind are forms only ot this ageut, what- ever it may be. Like everything else it is unknown to us in its own nature ; objectively it is invisible, and known to us only as a mode of motion; subjectively, as Will power, that is, as a sense of effort when we voluntarily overcome resistance. Matter is concentrated force or centres of force ; molecules and atoms are imaginary creations invented to express certain relations of quantity of forces to each other. As Huxley says, “ Every form is force visible; a form at rest is a balance of forces ; a form undergoing change is the predominance of one over others.” This predominance of one over others is caused by more force being added, which change or mode of motion continues till the additional force passes on to something else. Nothing can give out more force than it has received; when that is expended it is inert or dead till it has been re-charged. In a row of ivory balls force is put in at one end and passing through each it comes out, undiminished in quantity, at the other end. Force is put into a watch, by compressing a spring, it works all the machinery till it is expended, and then the watch stops. It is the same with the human body ; its “ organic units ” each of which has its own proper attributes, are supplied with force; when that is given out to the new matter, the}’- are dead, and require to be carried out as so much waste. What we call matter never generates force, it only conditions [195]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22443952_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
