The whole science, sir, rests upon a
single fact.
"You see this ball," he went on; "here it lies upon this slab. Now, it
is over there. What name shall we give to what has taken place, so
natural from a physical point of view, so amazing from a moral?
Movement, locomotion, changing of place? What prodigious vanity lurks
underneath the words. Does a name solve the difficulty? Yet it is the
whole of our science for all that. Our machines either make direct use
of this agency, this fact, or they convert it. This trifling
phenomenon, applied to large masses, would send Paris flying. We can
increase speed by an expenditure of force, and augment the force by an
increase of speed. But what are speed and force? Our science is as
powerless to tell us that as to create motion. Any movement whatever
is an immense power, and man does not create power of any kind.
Everything is movement, thought itself is a movement, upon movement
nature is based. Death is a movement whose limitations are little
known. If God is eternal, be sure that He moves perpetually; perhaps
God is movement. That is why movement, like God is inexplicable,
unfathomable, unlimited, incomprehensible, intangible. Who has ever
touched, comprehended, or measured movement? We feel its effects
without seeing it; we can even deny them as we can deny the existence
of a God.
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