SECT. II. 23 



SECTION II. 



ON FORCE, AND THE RELATIONS BETWEEN FORCE AND MATTER. 



FORCE is only known to us as a manifestation of divine 

 power which can neither be created nor destroyed. The 

 store of force or energy in nature is ever changing its 

 form of action, its amount never. It may be dispersed 

 in various directions, and subdivided so as to become 

 evanescent to our perceptions ; it may be balanced so 

 as to be in abeyance, or it may become potential as in 

 static electricity; but the instant the impediment is 

 removed the power is manifested by motion. Whatever 

 form force may assume it has invariably a compensation 

 or equivalent, whether in the heavens or on the earth. 

 The total sum of the living forces, vis viva, or actual 

 energy of the planets is the same every time they return 

 to the same relative positions with regard to one another, 

 to their orbits and to space, whatever may have been 

 their velocities or mutual disturbances. In the ocean, & , 

 the energy by which 25,000 cubic miles of water flowj 

 over a quarter of the globa in six hours, is exactly equal 

 to the force or energy that makes it ebb during the suc- 

 ceeding six hours. A body acquires heat in the exact 

 proportion that the adjacent substances become cold ; 

 and when heat is absorbed by a body, it becomes an 

 expansive energy at the expense of those around it, 

 which contract. Chemical action many miles distant 

 from the electro-magnet, as in telegraphs, is perfectly 



VOL. I. * C 3 



%-Axrrv>*m 



