GENERAL MEETING. 43 
opment of muscle and function the child rears itself very early 
against the constant pull of our pedestal, triumphs over it with 
new-found energies, dances on tiptoe, and spurns the ground, but 
is soon content to draw the battle, to wander around a few weary 
years on equal terms, at length to call in the aid of a stick or 
crutch, and, finally, to resign the unequal contest, and sink, van- 
quished and satisfied, to rest in its bosom. Weight thus seemed a 
natural characteristic of matter until identified and generalized by 
Newton as a universal and especially a reciprocal property. This’ 
generalization transferred the property, in conception, from the 
naturally heavy body to a cause outside thereof, namely, the earth 
itself. Here the human mind relucted, for, unlike repulsion, attrac- 
tion is not an observational fact. All forms of tension, stress, 
constraint—by whatever name called—are attended in the child’s 
experience with an intermediary connection. ‘The string is neces- 
sary to pull the cart, and the action of the magnet upon the iron 
particles is viewed with astonishment and awe. The sense of mys- 
tery does not proceed so far in his case as to contemplate the equally 
mysterious power which makes his string differ from a rope of sand. 
The most profound attention of the human mind has not yet 
fathomed this mystery. 
Inertia or mass is a less obvious property, being in early obser- 
vation and in common apprehension bound up with weight. It 
was not recognized in philosophy till Galileo’s time, nor is it now 
by the common perception, except after training. A lady makes 
no scruple of asking to have a loaded car or train or vessel stopped 
at a given point on the instant, and reinvested with motion any 
number of times; and would-be inventors often contrive theoretical 
machines having numerous heavy reciprocating parts timed to 
. velocities impossible of execution. With beings under other con- 
ditions it is wholly different. The sword-fish, e. y., can have no 
conception of gravity, as he has no perception of it, but his appre- 
hension of inertia is finely cultivated, through the muscular sense, 
in setting up and modifying the rapid movements in which his © 
existence delights, as well as through his vivid realization of mo- 
mentum, in the piercing of a whale or a vessel, by which his 
function is so powerfully exhibited. When once realized by human 
perception, however, inertia becomes identified with substance as 
its most primary characteristic. 
