GRAVISTATIC HEAT 329 



or manifestation of matter itself, not an intangible some- 

 thing independent of and acting through matter. Nor is 

 energy matter, or matter energy, but matter is energetic. 

 I peremptorily challenge this doctrine of conservation 

 as experimentally false, inasmuch as the finest adjust- 

 ments of the physicist's laboratory invariably exhibit a 

 steady evanescence of energy, with each successive step 

 of transmutation, impossible to trace or to account for 

 and whose resurrection in a new form rests on no surer 

 foundation than bald inference. I challenge the doctrine, 

 again, as philosophically abhorrent, in that it denies the 

 potential integrity of the universe and peccantly diverts 

 its original capital to current needs. 



To illustrate : It is Newton himself who is entitled 

 to the credit of originating the conception that the 

 earth's gravity holds the moon in perpetual leash, and 

 that were this power to run out or forget to act, even for 

 a second, the moon would fly off into space. What, then, 

 can be plainer than that the unique force of gravitation 

 is creative, that it evolves afresh in every new instant of 

 time, and that they who deny the existence of such a 

 source of vitality and recuperation in Nature simply mis- 

 state the fact? But Newton confined his attention to 

 only one side of the shield; he considered only the mat- 

 ter of centripetal force, but the centrifugal he left to tele- 

 ological speculations. Now, a creative force on one side 

 serving as the " action" can be evenly counterbalanced 

 on the other only by a like creative force to serve as the 

 "reaction." The centrifugal force, too, then, must evolve 

 freshly out of Nature, and should it run out instead of 

 the central attraction, the solar system would promptly 

 collapse and crash together. In fine, in order to keep 

 the planets gyrating around the sun that is to say, 

 merely to make them change their places, without at the 

 same time either adding to or taking away any of their 

 so-called "energy of position" demands the constant 

 exercise of those two enormous sources of creative en- 

 ergy, namely, the sun's gravity, and the stellar resultant. 

 The present teaching is, that to start a body and to stop 



