MECHANISM OF NATURE 



and distance. All the wisdom of the Chaldeans, 

 all the abstract thoughts of countless millions, are 

 utterly lost to us except where they have been pre- 

 served in material records. In stone and iron, in 

 the written page, in records impressed on material 

 brains, reproduced from one brain to another by 

 material impression, this is all we have of all the 

 thoughts and emotions that preceded our own gen- 

 eration. Is not an Edison Amberole Record a 

 greater wonder than a thousand spooks materiali- 

 zations, yet it is frankly material, while yet the 

 most abstract thought may be preserved and trans- 

 ferred to generations yet unborn. 



The idolatry of Force inherence will be ever co- 

 existing with human ignorance. Where shall we 

 worship, in Samaria or in Jerusalem? 



Humans are ever more ready to trust their su- 

 perficial impressions than their abstract logic. It 

 is easier to observe a thousand occult powers in 

 the image of stone than to prove the life process of 

 that stone. 



Das Ding an sick! How powerful the appeal. 

 It seems so natural, so lazily convincing, this inher- 

 ent identity of stick and stone and platonic human. 

 And yet science must give up all force-inherence 

 theories or be hampered and swallowed up by oc- 

 cultism. 



Scientists of our day generally claim to scorn all 

 occultism, while yet they hold heat to be latent in 

 coal and muscular strength in the Athlete. 



The very essence of dynamic theories is the trans- 

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