Miscellaneous. 301 



tity ; and a thing tliat is not even a quantity cannot be a force " 

 (ibid. pp. 93, 94). 



Before the cogent reasoning carried out by President Barnard, of 

 which the general tenor is indicated by these quotations, the view 

 that force affords a middle term between the moral and the material 

 worlds can be sustained as little as the pure materialism against 

 which the argument was directed. But if we ascend a grade 

 higher, and consider that which guides and compels force, as force 

 guides matter, I am disposed to believe that the problem may be 

 nearer to a solution. Yet I offer my views with hesitation, not 

 unmindful of the great thinkers who have considered these exalted 

 topics, and shrinking from the rebuke of presumption. 



There is an elegant experiment, in which the tension of a spring 

 is made to produce heat by percussion, thus developing the current 

 from a thermo-electric battery, which by successive modifications of 

 its force exhibits heat, chemical action, magnetic attraction, and 

 finally bends another spring — the same original force successively 

 appearing in all these various manifestations until it is reestablished 

 in its pfimitive form. In such an experiment the imperfections of 

 the apparatus would of course entail some loss at each successive 

 step, and thus preclude the practical recovery of an available force 

 equal to that expended in the original flexure of the spring. Yet 

 the fact is beyond question that such loss is due solely to the inade- 

 quacy of our implements for collecting and transmitting the force 

 at each stage of the experiment ; for the law of conservation teaches 

 that it is in every instance converted into other form or forms 

 without diminution. Could such an apparatus be constructed with 

 theoretical perfection, it would represent an eternal circuit of force ; 

 and, like the frictionless pendulum in a vacuum, it would exhibit a 

 perpetual motion, after the needful impulse had once been appHed. 

 The spring would oscillate for ever, did no extraneous force oppose, 

 whether the force producing its rebound were or were not trans- 

 mitted through a chain of modifications. 



In this inert apparatus no force whatever would have been im- 

 bodied ; yet qualities would have been implanted by design, which 

 would compel an indestructible force applied to it to play the part 

 of an unwilling Proteus. The inference seems unavoidable that 

 force may be guided and controlled, compelled to exert itself in this 

 or that shape, without the outlay of any other force for the purpose. 

 If it be objected that it is an intrinsic law of force that it shall 

 change its form in exerting itseK, the case is in no wise altered by 

 the expression of this truism. Our design has prescribed, and (ex- 

 traneous force being absent) might indefinitely prescribe, the modes 

 and directions in which that constant force should manifest itself. 



Muscular force is directed, and in its vital action is usually con- 

 trolled, by will. If we assume it to be coequal with the expenditure 

 of tissue *, measurable alike by its transferred results and by the 



* Even if it bo also, to some extent, supplied by the disorganization of food 

 not fully converted, the argument its not thereby affected. 



