ITS SELF-COKSEEVATION". 151 



distance the gravitative strain must become intensified 

 between centers approaching each other, just as, on the 

 other hand, with increase in distance the strain between 

 those receding from each other must undergo corre- 

 sponding diminution. 



Thus there must arise aggregations of force-centers 

 within certain regions surrounded by relatively vacant 

 fields of space. And this conclusion will appear the more 

 substantial as in the further course of our argument we 

 find increasing reason for believing the World-Energy to 

 be guided in its activity by a consistent method; or, in 

 other words, in so far as we find reason to regard the 

 World-Energy as itself an infinite, self-conscious process. 

 But again these force-centers or nuclei of force are but 

 the more condensed portions of indefinitely extended 

 spheres. There is, therefore, a tension of force consti- 

 tuting each of these separately, and at the same time 

 relating each through its indefinitely diffused substance 

 to all other centers. 



In every single force- center, then, we already have the 

 simplest relation of force constituting matter. And this 

 nucleus of an indefinitely extended, infinitely diffused 

 force-sphere is just that part which, through the very 

 fact of its being such nucleus or focus of force, presents 

 most resistance to the action of external force. 



It is this nucleus, then, that constitutes the "atom" 

 which thus proves to be something very far different 

 from the once popular atom, consisting of a simple, iso- 

 lated, infinitely hard, infinitely small, absolutely bounded 

 piece of some incomprehensible something wholly apart 

 from force, and which thus had no possible office to per- 

 form in the economy of the universe. On the contrary, it 



