arid the actual Forms of Inorganic Bodies. 143 



which is the fountain or focus of the motion. Were it desir- 

 able, these results might be illustrated at great length; but, 

 after those which have been made, let this remark suffice, that 

 it is the nature of elastic bodies to undulate, and that the only 

 undulatory form which has not the element of change implied 

 in it is the sphere. Through this form alone can motion which 

 intrinsically agitates it, or is embodied in it as a vis viva, be 

 propagated equally and symmetrically, so as not to subject its 

 different parts to dissimilar forces^ causing them to change their 

 places. In fact, a sphere is the only form which, viewed as an 

 elastic medium, possesses unity; and the effect of any motion 

 embodied in any insulated group of elastic particles, vievved sim- 

 ply as such, must be the follovving ; — First, to arrange them in 

 the symmetrical positions most contiguous to those in which they 

 happened to exist when the elastic action commenced ; then to 

 remove those particles, of which there is a smaller number simi- 

 larly posited, into positions corresponding to those in which there 

 is a greater number, and so to diminish the number of parts, and 

 increase the stability and unity of the whole, till, if nothing pre- 

 vents such a result, its stability and unity become a maximum, 

 by its becoming a spherical mass. 



Though such a state of things exist, however, it does by no 

 means follow that spheres shall be frequently produced in na- 

 ture. For if the particles aggregating possess peculiar and dis- 

 similar faces, and tend to unite only by particular points, facets, 

 or edges, and not by any region indifferently, then, of course, 

 the form actually resulting may be very dissimilar to a sphere; 

 though it still must be modified from what it otherwise would 

 have been, had no such tendency existed as that which it has 

 been shewn, the consideration of motion embodied in elastic par- 

 ticles leads to. 



Thus, whether we apply ourselves to observation, or trace 

 the phenomena which must necessarily result from the nature 

 of matter and motion, it follows, that there is in the particles 

 of inorganic bodies, while freely grouping together, a tendency 

 to assume and settle in the most symmetrical positions possible. 

 But it is no less certain that this tendency is opposed by others, 

 whose agency is to give to those groups forms different from 

 those of the sphere. From the conjunct agency of these (orces, 

 therefore, the actual forms of inorganic bodies and the phenomena 



