528 EQUILIBRATION. 



attraction and repulsion, are, indeed, the complementary as- 

 pects of that absolutely persistent force which is the ultimate 

 datum of consciousness. Just in the same way that the 

 equality of action and re-action is a corollary from the per- 

 sistence of force, since their inequality would imply the dis- 

 appearance of the differential force into nothing, or its ap- 

 pearance out of nothing; so, we cannot become conscious of 

 an attractive force without becoming simultaneously con- 

 scious of an equal and opposite repulsive force. For every 

 experience of a muscular tension, (under which form alone 

 we can immediately know an attractive force,) presupposes 

 an equivalent resistance — a resistance shown in the counter- 

 balancing pressure of the body against neighbouring objects, 

 or in that absorption of force which gives motion to the 

 body, or in both — a resistance which we cannot conceive as 

 other than equal to the tension, without conceiving force to 

 have either appeared or disappeared, and so denying the 

 persistence of force. And from this necessary correlation, 

 results our inability, before pointed out, of interpreting 

 any phenomena save in terms of these correlatives — an ina- 

 bility shown alike in the compulsion we are under to think of 

 the statical forces which tangible matter displays, as due 

 to the attraction and repulsion of its atoms, and in the com- 

 pulsion we are under to think of dynamical forces exercised 

 through space, by regarding space as filled with atoms simi- 

 larly endowed. Thus from the existence of a force that is 

 for ever unchangeable in quantity, there follows, as a neces- 

 sary corollary, the co-extensive existence of these opposite 

 forms of force — forms under which the conditions of our 

 consciousness oblige us to represent that absolute force 

 which transcends our knowledge. 



But the forces of attraction and repulsion being univer- 

 sally co-existent, it follows, as before shown, that all motion 

 is motion under resistance. Units of matter, solid, liquid, 

 aeriform, or ethereal, filling the space which any moving 

 body traverses, offer to such body the resistance consequent 



