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assumes the new character only by becoming definite in its 
action, with which the idea of acceleration is utterly incom- 
patible. When force, at consecutive times, or with variable 
relations of place, acts with variable intensities, determined 
by a law of time or of distance, it is the practice to merge all 
the events in one, and to impute them to a force of some 
peculiar nature rather than to force acting as distinct causes. 
Such a force is the gravitation of mechanical science. 
Cause and effect, each as a whole, are necessarily equal in 
all cases ; whether a cause involve one or several forces, and 
whether it concentrate its effect on a single event or many. 
The triplicated cause of effect, according to this system, 
may be immediate, or remote. It is immediate, when the 
term cause is applied to the relations which unite it to its 
effect without the occurrence of any intermediate events ; and 
remote, when applied to relations no longer existing, but 
which have established subsequent and intervening ones. 
Cause may thus be more or less remote, extending back 
through any period ; and it may be also, when immediate, 
more or less continuous , the time changing in its identity , but 
all the three relations remaining constant. 
The existence of these several relations being understood 
as explanatory of the observed sequences of cause and effect, 
and there being in the relations of time and place nothing 
further that needs to be here noticed, I wish to direct inquiry 
more particularly to the relation— force. Now, without as- 
suming any further knowledge of force than has been given 
in speaking of attraction generally, but proceeding to judge 
of it as required by the exhibition it makes of itself, we have 
only to contemplate the immense variety of material events, 
for each one of which force is an element of cause, to feel 
assured it must be less multitudinous in its kinds than they 
are. But, on the other hand, observation will not justify us 
in ascribing all effects to a single force ; which in that case 
would have to be rendered into distinct causes merely by 
diversities in the relations of time and place. We might, it is 
true, under the relation of place, extend our conceptions to 
position, and thus include much that would not be involved in 
the idea of distance — indeed to position I have to attribute 
much; but no view we might take of the events which 
science has classed under distinct branches of physical know- 
ledge would enable us to suspect there were not some 
essential differences between the forces of gravitation, elec- 
tricity, and heat, which all the world acknowledges to be 
perfectly distinct at least up to that point — sufficient for my 
present purpose — at which one is supposed by way of “ cor- 
vol. hi. o 
