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546 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
{b)
An original impulse, which culminates in an unalterable motion,
within a resisting Ether that Newton had declared incompatible with
that motion.
(c)
Universal gravity, which, we are taught, always tends to a centre
in rectilinear descent—alone the cause of the revolution of the whole
Solar System, which is performing an eternal double gyration, each
body around its axis and orbit. Another occasional version is
{d) A magnet in the Sun; or, that the said revolution is due to a
magnetic force, which acts, just as gravitation does, in a straight line,
and varies inversely as the square of the distance.*
(e) The whole acting under invariable and changeless laws, which
are, nevertheless, often shown variable, as during some well-known
freaks of planets and other bodies, as
or recede from the Sun.
also when the comets approach
(/) A Motor Force always proportionate to the mass it is acting
upon ; but independent of the specific nature of that mass, to which it
is proportionate ; which amounts to sa5dng, as I^e Couturier does, that
Without that force independent from, and of quite another nature than, the said
mass, the latter, were it as huge as Saturn, or as tiny as Ceres, would always fall
with the same rapidity, t
A mass, furthermore, which derives its weight from the body on
which it weighs.
Thus neither I^aplace's perceptions of a solar atmospheric fluid,
which would extend beyond the orbits of the planets, nor I^e Couturier's
electricity, nor Foucault's heat,:|: nor this, nor the other, can ever help
any of the numerous hypotheses about the origin
and permanency of
rotation to escape from this squirrel's wheel, any more than can the
theory of gravity itself. This mystery is the Procrustean bed of
Physical Science. If Matter is passive, as we are now taught, the
simplest movement cannot be said to be an essential property of Matter
—the latter being considered simply as an inert mass. How,, then, can
such a complicated movement, compound and multiple, harmonious
and equilibrated, lasting in the eternities for millions and millions of
years, be attributed simply to its own inherent force, unless the latter
is an Intelligence A physical will is something new—a conception
that the Ancients would never have entertained, indeed! For over a
century all distinction between body and force has been made away
with. " Force is but the property of a body in motion," say the
* Coulomb's I,aw. t Musee des Sciences, 15 August, 1857. t Panorama des Mondes, p. 55.