30 Wilde, Evolution of the Mental Faculties. 



the like ignorance prevails in regard to the rotation of the 

 moon on its axis during its synodical revolution. (4) That 

 the Cartesian quantity of motion, or momentum, of a 

 body, as the product of its mass and its velocity, was the 

 vulgar measure of force used in the common arts of life 

 from remote ages, and was applied generally, by Descartes 

 and by Newton, to include bodies moving by the free action 

 of gravity, of which they had no experimental knowledge. 

 (5) That Newton's first law of motion, founded on the 

 common belief in the absolute inertia of all bodies, is in 

 contradiction to the spontaneous motions of endo- 

 thermic substances and of the organised forms of the 

 hydro-carbon compounds, (6 That the Cartesian dogma 

 of the universal conservation of motion and rest is 

 disproved by the volitional manifestations of energy and 

 motion through the explosion of endothermic bodies and 

 by other examples. (7) That the conservation of rest and 

 motion is the determinate and limited expression of 

 Infinite Will, and rests upon a different foundation from 

 that of the conservation of substance, the creation or 

 annihilation of which is unthinkable. 



Although the rapid progress of the natural sciences 

 during recent times is undoubtedly due to the close 

 application of the mental faculties exclusively to enquiries 

 connected with the molar and molecular qualities of 

 bodies, yet, in dealing with universals, whether of space, 

 body, or motion, it is impossible to avoid the subject of 

 first and final causes, which is imminent at every turn, in 

 taking a widely comprehensive view of natural phenomena. 

 Thus, the principle of spontaneous motion brings before 

 the enquiring mind the problem of the mode or modes of 

 existence of these causes, as they are manifested in the 

 religious ideas of the various races of mankind. In the 

 no distant future, advancing civilization will imperatively 



