THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 159 



call for, but the one reading of this great law, in their 

 attempts to reach the truth as it is to be found impressed 

 in legible characters on the " book of nature " ; their 

 appreciation of the affirmative aspect of the law if we 

 may be allowed the expression is universal, their regard 

 for the negative side of the law in like manner places 

 in bold relief, that they tacitly regard it as a negligible 

 quantity, a scientific curiosity, or a " survival " of the not 

 fittest. We, therefore, once more see, even here, where 

 scientific beliefs, like coal, have been crystallised into 

 diamonds, that negative, or neutral, elements, have 

 become attached to them which call for removal, that 

 their full lustre may be revealed, and their true value 

 appraised, before they become the prized and permanent 

 possessions, of earnest searchers after truth. 



We, moreover, claim that the law of inertia, as thus 

 understood, should be regarded as the most far reaching 

 of the physical examples of circulation, and that by it 

 matter is affected, and directed, in its movements in 

 molecule and in mass, in both its organic and inorganic, 

 regions ; in its forms visible to the naked eye, as well as 

 in those which can only be revealed by the aid of micro- 

 scope, and telescope ; and by inference, those others, 

 lying beyond our ken, which appeal to our intelligence 

 only as articles of scientific faith. Again, therefore, we 

 feel ourselves constrained to repeat : circulatio circula- 

 tionum omnia circulatio, and that instead of banishing 

 " perpetual motion " to the limbo of the unknowable we 

 must regard it as the ^ery pivot on which the phenomena 

 of the universe revolve, and the foundation on which 

 they may be said to rest, to use a word which is strangely 

 contrary in meaning, and a complete contrast to the entire 

 problem under discussion, but nevertheless embodying a 

 fragment of the truth on which alone belief itself, when 

 sifted from all untruth, may find a resting-place, and a 

 calm repose after its vicissitudes of u change and decay," 

 of strength, and weakness, of age, and rejuvenescence, of 

 rejection, and acceptance, negation, and affirmation. 



The teaching of modern physics is, but a continuation, 

 and illustration, of this great truth in its wider, more 

 elaborated, finished, and cultured, aspects. 



