Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

OP MATTER, iMIND, AND SPIRIT. 373Addilional Remarks on {heSpeculations of Farraday and Exlejjj abovenoticed.1819. Is it possible for a mere centre to be endowed with a force ? orreasonable that language should not make a distinction between somethinoandnothing, between cause and effect, between matter and the propertiesof matter ? m being the properties, and a the Newtonian atom, of whichthey have been considered as the attributes, I cannot concur in the reasoningwhich infers that where we can only perceive phenomena, we are todispense with the idea of causation, because that causation is not directlyperceptible. It seems to me, from the meaning of the words, that nocause can exist without some cifect, nor can any effect exist without acause. Language founded on the existence of ideas cannot be disused.Can there be any reason for considering any thing as endowed with existencewhich gives no evidence of existence? We distinguish betweenthe thing which causes and the effect which it produces. The cause evidentlyhas a centrality ; the effect, though it indicates by the direction in which itarrives, the centre whence it proceeds, is remote from that centre. Theexistence of this centrality seems to be recognised in the suggestion thatatoms are centres of forces. This implies that the source or cause is atthe centre in each atom, and, of course, the phenomenon, being more orless remote from the centre, cannot be the source or cause, and hence hasbeen treated as an effect or property..1820. The suggestion that the office of atoms may be performed bycentres of forces, in fact, assigns to a mere centre the part now performedby a Newtonian atom. But it must be evident that the centre is thatpoint within any rotating mass, which does not turn therewith ; and which,where neither of the opposite motions resulting from rotation take place,can neither have length nor breadth. This reduces the idea of a centreto a common definition with a mathematical point; which is nihility inthe extreme. An absolutely void space may be identified with nihility,and a mathematical point is a portion of that space, without length,breadth, or thickness. To endow centres with forces is to disregard theaxiom, ^' Out of nothing nothing can come.'' Moreover, wherefore shouldthere be a force at certain mathematical points, and yet others be destituteof the same attribute ? Manifestly, if some matlicmatical points are deficientof powers with which others are endowed, there must be somethinfi^associated with one, which is not associated with the other. This justifiesthe Newtonian idea, that the force, though proceeding from the centre, is,like the terrestrial attraction of gravitation, the resultant of the complicatedattraction of the whole of a body surrounding the centre. But the centralityof the force does not seem to accord with the idea of the inferreddiffusion of properties. In the instance of gravitation it does not accountfor those attributes by which this globe acts as a solid mass within its