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which act and react on each other, the centre of gravity or 
action must be conceived immovable. There is just as much 
motion up and down, forward and backward, to the right and 
to the left. Real motions must be motions of something or 
other. If many motions are really summed into one motion, 
it must be the motion of some one thing or body. But when 
we thus dismiss the individual bodies, and retain as fixed and 
permanent the motions only, the plus and minus values neu- 
tralize each other. Thus the only result of the summation is 
not motion at all, but absolute rest. Treat these forces, not as 
attributes inseparable from particular bodies that move, but as 
things, like liquids, that may be poured from vessel to vessel, 
and they resolve themselves into a collective movement of 
nothing nowhither, and wholly disappear. 
Contradiction the fifth. The Potential Energy supplies 
another element of confused thought and metaphysical incon- 
gruity, as striking as the last. It depends for its real existence 
on our confounding the present instant with millions on millions 
of finite periods of future time, or intervals of possible future 
change. The countless millions of periods, which every pair 
of atoms would require in passing from their actual distance to 
zero or infinity, are assumed to be all in present existence, and 
included alike in each passing moment. The Kinetic Energy 
is counted once only, through all successive instants, in the 
common part of it, however much it may be increased. But 
the Potential, whether it increases or diminishes, is reckoned 
over and over again, in the common part of it, however many 
instants of time there may be. 
Contradiction the sixth. The theory affirms the force of the 
universe to be persistent and invariable in amount, but to undergo 
incessant changes of form only. It is indestructible as adamant, 
but exceeds Proteus himself in its capacity and appetite for 
transformation. But when Force is divorced from matter, of 
which it is the quality, and turned into a supreme divinity, 
these transformations are left without any cause or possible 
explanation. No higher Power or Will is allowed to interfere. 
Force, blind Force, must reign supreme, binding mind and matter 
alike in the bonds of fate, and admits of no rival near its throne. 
But why should it inflict on itself a perpetual self-torture? Why 
cut itself, from moment to moment, into innumerable sections or 
fragments, no sooner reunited, than triturated with new divisions 
without end ? Why is this Force, our new divinity, condemned 
to a fate like that of the wandering Jew, so as to rove from 
atom to atom, from world to world, throughout infinite space, 
with no limit to its wanderings, and no motive for its restless 
