Force and Form. 1045 



made? Did a Creator make it? If so, what did he make it out of, 

 and where did he get his material? If he set it in motion, where did he 

 get the energy? Is the energ} r he had in the beginning, reduced by the 

 amount communicated to moving matter, and he therefore that much 

 weaker? Can he lose energy to matter and recover it again from mat- 

 ter as a man does? Could he do this without being matter himself? 

 How did He come into existence, and when? 



Do the operations of the attraction of gravitation require to be 

 watched in order to render them effectual? 



The last question is an easy one, and so we answer it. Certainly not; 

 gravitation will cause bodies to fall toward each other, night and day, 

 just the same whether any one is looking on or not. As asserted in the 

 last chapter, all the motions of every sort that we are acquainted with, 

 have arisen directly or indirectly from the force of gravity. They are 

 all continuations and extant reverberations of the energy of fallen 

 bodies. If the body will fall without supervision the consequences of 

 the fall will occur equally without outside interference, and we may 

 legitimately conclude that every motion that we know anything about, 

 because it is only an echo and rebound, is as necessary and inevitable 

 as the blow or fall of which it is a continuation. 



In foregoing chapters it has frequently been pointed out that the dif- 

 ferences in forms of motion depend upon the character and form of the 

 body to which the energy is applied. This must hold good from the 

 minutest particles to planets, suns, or even stellar systems. A new 

 distribution of energy in the solar system would cause a new adjust- 

 ment of the position of the planets. On the other hand the forms of 

 bodies are determined by the action of the force upon them or upon the 

 materials from which they are formed. 



If we break a piece of ice, a piece of wood, apiece of cast iron, a piece 

 of steel, a piece of sandstone, we find the surfaces of the several frac- 

 tures all different, and these differences evidently depend on the way in 

 which the particles are joined together by "cohesion," and this in turn 

 must depend on the shape of the particles, and this again upon the ele- 

 ments involved, and their polarities. The difference between the cellu- 

 lar and fibrous tissues of plants, arises from difference in the form of 

 the cells. The cells of a moss for example, are spherical, those of a 

 hemp are long and tubular, which is sufficient to account for the differ- 

 ence in texture and toughness of the two plants. A piece of pine 

 splits easily the long way of its cells, but not the cross way, which it 

 would do if the cells were no longer than they are wide. If the cells 

 of the wood were all the same length and placed so their ends were 

 even with each other, at these ends there would be places of easy break- 

 age. But they lap past each other or break joints, consequently the 



