Pilocereus senilis and other papers / by Walter Moxon.

  • Moxon, W.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pilocereus senilis and other papers / by Walter Moxon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    tains things everywhere^ various things, one here, another there, human nature sets up negations or Nothings into positive form, and works with Nothings as if they were things. For Nature has none of the negations which form the negatives in the human mind. Once somebody said, ' NatiTre abhors a vacuum,' but Nature is simply indifferent to a vacuum. The only thing that is not indifferent to a vacuum is the thing that invented it; that is, the human mind. Human nature abhors a vacuum ; it reminds us of hunger we could not satisfy, &c. If by a vacuum you mean a space containing Nothing, don't impute such an affair to Nature; no one ever met any such an affair in Nature. Empty any vessel, say a glass receiver, take out all you can from it, suck out the air from it, and it is still as full as ever; it is only now filled with thinner stuff. In the most perfect vacuum ever made Mr. Crookes will push his radiometer round with the substance your vacuum is full of, stiffening that substance into light-rays, or, as others say, into heat-rays—rays, at any rate, substantial enough to set the radiometer in motion. The luminiferous ether still is there, and the material whose vibrations cause heat. At any moment of your life when your senses are active they will reveal to you a world of solid and fluid things whose places depend on circumstances. You push a movable solid thing through the air, and it ' moves on,' as you say; that is, afterwards the solid is where the fluid air
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