J.owrie.] •^*-'^^ [Sept. 17, 



* 

 forces beyond the special system which we are studying, analogovis to 

 those found in it, nor even if we postulate others within it. Every sys- 

 tem of actual things requires such postulates to connect it intellectually 

 with some higher system, or to furnish it Avith at least a provisional 

 foundation, or to give completeness to its structure; and especially every 

 phenominally self-sustaining system requires us to postulate and then 

 seek within itself the forces by which it is maintained, besides its initial 

 force proceeding from without. Thus every class of plants and animals 

 has within itself the forces by which the creative act is maintained, 

 though always dependent on the larger system of the universe; and the 

 science of physiology is founded on this assumption. 



In the study of language, having no history of its origin, we may 

 assume that it was a gift by God to man; but, thus received, it could be 

 but vei-y feebly maintained as a mere treasure of the memory, and in the 

 very form in which it was bestowed; and, in order to account for its con- 

 tinuance in all its varieties, with its degradations, restorations, additions 

 and improvements, even with a fundamental identity of structure, we 

 must postulate other mental forces, which, with memory, constitute our 

 faculty of language, and then proceed to seek them out. 



And so it is with law, government and religion, with all their rules, 

 forms, rites, symbols, and principles of faith and conduct. Their origin 

 may be beyond our i-eacli; but we are not, for this reason, prevented from 

 learning that memory is the mere servant of other faculties in maintain- 

 ing them through all the changes which they, with man, undergo, and 

 that it is a prominent function of our life to work out our own develop- 

 ment of them, and to improve by doing so. 



I now venture to suggest very generally and briefly some of the conse- 

 quences that would seem to follow from the admission of the dynamical 

 views here presented. 



1. We must give up Sir Isaac Newton's mode of accounting for the 

 elliptical form of cosmical orbits. I expressed this in August, 1860, to 

 the Academy of Science and Arts at Pittsburgh, founding it merely on 

 the fact that all cosmical centres are themselves moving. The foregoing 

 considerations now make this result more obvious. 



2. There ai-e many forms of cosmical motion, treated as inequalities,- 

 which are as normal elements of the special or partial system in which 

 they are found as are the eccentrics on the axis of a steam engine, and 

 they are not abnormities or disturbances produced by the forces of bodies 

 out of the system, though they may themselves, in some cases, be dis- 

 turbed, exaggerated, obliterated or even reversed by such forces. I ven- 

 ture to name as belonging to this class, the moon's annual equation, the 

 motion of apsides, variations of eccentricity and of major axis, and also 

 the recession of planetary nodes, including the procession of the equi- 

 noxes 



3. This orbital force requires great inequalities of relative as well as of 

 absolute motion, and presents a very obvious explanation of the ine- 

 qualities of the moon's motion as the earth, with its unequal velocity. 



