POPULAR SCIENCE 255 



other — a Law which was made for the protection of the com- 

 munity as a whole only, and not developed enough to consider 

 any of the units individually comprising that community. This 

 is a point that Fichte, in his myopia, overlooked to explain the 

 genesis of morality, for the fact remains that the Instinct of 

 Compassion, as developed by the Doctrine of Christianity, inter- 

 acted with the Law of the Human Herd and created the overtone 

 of Civilisation as we see it developed to-day in a Christian 

 nation. 



These deductions, though in the realms of abstract thought, 

 are indisputable, the interactions concerned being fundamentally 

 the same as the more primitive ones between physical forces, 

 for rhythmical action is the method of all physiological and 

 psychological motion. The age periods, sleep, and other 

 diurnal cycles, the monthly cycles and the periods in vegetable 

 life, in innumerable variety, are well known, to mention but a 

 few physiological periods. Of the pathological periods, we have 

 certain periodic diseases and the periodic insanities : Folie 

 Circulaire, Psychorhythm, Folie k Double Forme, Circular 

 Insanity, Periodic Mania, Katatonia, etc. The impossibility 

 is to find any true exception in both normal and abnormal 

 life. 



Thus it is that rhythmical vibrations, inherent in the Sun on 

 the one hand, and in our planet on the other, have been able 

 to produce overtones, which have ever complicated themselves 

 into the various forms of energy responsible for these organised 

 changes. It is the assortment of these forces that takes us 

 from the more primitive to the more complex forces, until we 

 get to the level of the Psyche. The physiology of the living 

 body and the psychology of the mind are rich in examples of 

 this periodic action and its superimposed overtones. Let us 

 consider this assortment of Force from (i) the Cosmic, (2) the 

 Physical, and (3) the Biological aspects. 



The Cosmic aspect of the Assortment of Force naturally takes 

 us to its very foundations. Bode's Law of the relative distances 

 of the planets is only explicable as the result of rhythmical action 

 conditioned by the antagonism between gravitational and 

 electro-magnetic forces ; for it is here a general law that all 

 opposing forces react against each other in rhythms. While 

 the gravitational forces are dependent only upon the masses of, 

 and the distances between, the bodies, and vary rhythmically 

 according to the periodic alteration in distance : the electro- 

 magnetic forces are dependent upon radiation, which is in itself 

 rhythmical in nature. If we accept the Nebular Hypothesis as 

 assuming the formation of the first ring in a Primaeval Nebula, 

 we see that the gravitational forces of the ring would be dimin- 

 ished, compared to those in the centre, by the centrifugal element, 



