SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 553 



Law, we found to be a necessary implication of the fact that 

 Force can neither arise out of nothing nor lapse into 

 nothing. 



The deduction next drawn, was that forces which seem 

 to be lost are transformed into their equivalents of other 

 forces ; or, conversely, that forces which become manifest, do 

 so by disappearance of pre-existing equivalent forces. Of 

 these truths we found illustrations in the motions of the 

 heavenly bodies, in the changes going on over the Earth's 

 surface, and in all organic and super-organic actions. 



It turned out to be the same with the law that every- 

 thing moves along the line of least resistance, or the line of 

 greatest traction, or their resultant. Among movements of 

 all orders, from those of stars down to those of nervous dis- 

 charges and commercial currents, it was shown both that 

 this is so, and that, given the Persistence of Force, it must 

 be so. 



So, too, we saw it to be with " The Rhythm of Motion." 

 All motion alternates — be it the motion of planets in their 

 orbits or ethereal molecules in their undulations — be it the 

 cadences of speech or the rises and falls of prices; and, as 

 before, it became manifest that Force being persistent, this 

 perpetual reversal of Motion between limits is inevitable. 



§ 186. These truths holding of all existences, were 

 recognized as of the kind required to constitute what we 

 distinguished as Philosophy. But, on considering them, we 

 perceived that as they stand they do not form anything like 

 a Philosophy; and that a Philosophy cannot be formed by 

 any number of such truths separately known. Each such 

 truth expresses the general law of some one factor by which 

 phenomena, as we habitually experience them, are pro- 

 duced; or, at most, expresses the law of co-operation of 

 some two factors. But knowing what are the elements of a 

 process, is not knowing how these elements combine to 

 effect it. That which alone can unify knowledge must be 

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