294 COSMIC rillLOSOFHY. [pt. ii. 



For the last resultant represents the direction and amount of 

 a surplus force which remains after all the other forces have 

 been equilibrated; and to assert that this force will not be 

 manifested in motion along this line, is to assert that force 

 may be expended without elfect. Still more obvious does 

 this become, when we remember that " our only evidence of 

 excess of force is the movement it produces." Since we 

 know force not in itself, but only as revealed to conscious- 

 ness in matter and motion, it follows that motion in any 

 direction is the only proof we have that there is a surplus of 

 unantagonized force acting in that direction. So that our 

 theorem becomes almost an identical proposition. But if 

 we ask why the greater of two opposing forces is that which 

 causes motion in its own direction, there can be no answei 

 save the one already given. There is no warrant save the, 

 consciousness that the unneutralized surplus of force cannot 

 cease to act. 



The simplest case contemplated by this corollary is that 

 of a moving body left to itself. There being here no force 

 involved, save the body's own momentum, the direction of 

 motion is an infinite straight line. But since the realization 

 of such a case would involve the annihilation of all matter 

 save the body in question, it is obvious that no such simple 

 case can ever have existed within the limits of the knowable 

 universe. The simplest case of motion which can come 

 within our cognizance is really complex to a degree which 

 baffles computation. Mr. Spencer somewhere remarks that 

 when a man appears to be walking westward, he is really 

 being carried eastward by the earth's rotation at the rate of 

 1,000 miles an hour. Besides this, the earth's orbital motion 

 is carrying him westward at the differential rate of 67,000 

 miles an hour. Meanwhile the motion of the solar system 

 toward the constellation Hercules is all the time bearing him 

 in a direction neither east nor west. While, if we could 

 comprehend in a single view the dynamic relations of the 



