﻿412 Dr. Guyot on the Forms and Forces of Matter. 



Although the exterior and interior motions of bodies are one 

 and the same thing, yet the manifestations and effects are 

 very different upon our senses and our organization, and not 

 less different in their physical and chemical actions upon in- 

 animate bodies. 



To study these two great divisions of motion we shall desig- 

 nate them by their most generally received names, translation 

 and vibration. 



Motion of Translation. 



The motion of translation is, as we have said, the passage of 

 a body from one point of space to another. Is this apparent 

 and exterual motion engendered in the heavenly bodies by the 

 internal motion of their molecules as it is with animals ? Or is 

 it rather primitive and spontaneous ? and do the molecules of 

 the heavenly bodies only enter into vibration when their move- 

 ment of translation cannot satisfy the sum total of motion essen- 

 tial to their mass ? 



This question solves itself after the study of vibration. For 

 the present it is sufficient to say that the movement of transla- 

 tion, be it the cause or the effect of the movement of vibration, 

 always strives to take place in straight lines ; and if bodies move 

 in curved or broken lines, their change of direction is due to 

 some dominant influence. 



The motion of translation of all bodies tends to take place 

 with the same velocity ; and this velocity is immense and indefi- 

 nite. But bodies do not move with the same force, unless they 

 possess the same number of elementary atoms. Velocity re- 

 sides in the atom, and the force of motion in the number of 

 atoms ; and this stands to reason. Twenty men have only the 

 velocity of one man, but they have the strength of twenty. 

 Nevertheless force only exists and only appears as the resistance 

 to velocity. The smaller the velocity becomes, the greater is 

 the force, and inversely. So that if the velocity were infinite 

 (absolue) for each atom of a body, the force would be zero in a 

 body of one as in a body of a thousand atoms. And inversely, if 

 the velocity were completely stopped, the effort of the atom or 

 body would attain its maximum. The forces of nature are 

 therefore only resistance to motion in direction or velocity, or 

 the production of motion with a velocity and direction which 

 overcome certain obstacles. This oscillation between force aud 

 velocity is nothing but the ceaseless transformation of motion of 

 translation into motion of vibration, and vice versa. And this, 

 I hope, will appear from the study of the motion of vibration, 

 a study the least advanced, but the most necessary for the un- 

 derstanding of general physics. 



