John Wesley Powell

“ There is a vast amount of lore concerning ghosts and the circumstances under which they leave the body. Stories of ghosts that leave when the body sleeps; stories of ghosts that leave when the person is absorbed in deep contemplation, and the ghost snatches the opportunity to make a journey by itself ”

“ When we conceive that inertia is resistance to deflection, it becomes a proposition, easily comprehended, that rigidity is resistance to the differential deflection of the molecular parts of a body. Every one of its minute parts must be moved if the body is moved, and the regional parts as distinguished from the molecular parts cannot be moved without fracturing the body. Thus we see that rigidity can be explained simply as a mode of motion without resort to occult force. ”

“ When the heated iron cools, it is supposed that the iron yields its motion as speed, and dissipates it into surrounding objects, and especially into the ether; it was not seen that the thermal motion in the body is transmuted into another mode of molecular motion still within the body, as exhibited in strength and rigidity. From this fallacy logical consequences are derived when it is held that the sun is dissipating its motion because it is a cooling body. For does not the motion of the sun as heat come through the ether to the earth, and to all other external bodies? ”

“ Hence, Philosophy, by giving it an extended meaning, leads us to think of all our senses as deceiving us in the same way that the eyes do; and so makes us feel ourselves floating in a world of phantasms. Had phenomenon and appearance no such misleading associations, little, if any, of this mental confusion would result. ”

“ Only in late years have we learned that heat is a mode of motion, that light is a mode of motion, that electricity is a mode of motion, and a few physicists still believe that gravity is an occult force. ”

“ The chair moves up, and the man and the earth move down. Of the force in the arm the man is conscious; of the force in the chair he is cognizant, that is, it is learned by combined judgments through inference. But Spencer has never analyzed judgment; he does not distinguish between consciousness and inference, sometimes using consciousness in the sense in which science must use it, but oftener using it in the sense of cognition, and always confounding the two meanings, he rests under the fallacy of the double meaning in consciousness, and reifies it as cognition itself. ”

“ On lifting a chair, the force exerted we regard as equal to that antagonistic force called the weight of the chair; and we cannot think of these as equal without thinking of them as like in kind; since equality is conceivable only between things that are connatural. The axiom that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions, commonly exemplified by this very instance of muscular effort versus weight, cannot be mentally realized on any other condition. Yet, contrariwise, it is incredible that the force as existing in the chair really resembles the force as present to our minds. ”

“ Here the confusion which arises from fallacy, together with the contradictions involved, are fittingly set forth; but our philosopher accepts the fallacies and indorses the contradictions, and finally speculates with the difference in meaning between the terms phenomenon and appearance, and he adopts the philosophy of noumenon and phenomenon, and makes the noumenon to stand for the thing in itself the occult force, which he supposes to be void substance and void motion. ”

“ Now, I have formed a habit of interpreting the passing of outside bodies as motion in myself and the coach, and when the trains outside move I infer that I and my coach move, and so strong is this inference that I am impelled to look for some verification before I can decide in which body the molar motion inheres, for the contradictory judgments are both intuited. ”

“ To the primitive or naïve apprehension, motion is an effect of a cause, and this cause is considered as something which acts on another and produces motion in self, in order to act on that other, and it may also produce motion in that other. It was long before man cognized that force is itself motion and motion is force. Primitive man formed the habit of considering motion as an effect of force. He was conscious that he could exercise force, and discovered that it could produce molar motion. ”

“ Primitive men realize in others, and believe of themselves, that the body remains quiescent in sleep, and to account for the actions of the specters of the dream they conclude that the ghost can leave the body. When this false judgment becomes habitual—i.e., that the property of conception or judgment can depart from the body and sustain an independent existence, without number, space, motion, and time, or in reciprocal terms, without kind, form, force, and causation—then the specters of dreams may have a separate existence away from the body, as shades, subtle forms, or occult personages. ”

“ Spencer is supposed to be the philosopher of evolution, and that is his grand theme, but he resolves change into force, not seeing that there can be no change without force, and no force without change. He seems to resolve judgment under the term consciousness, or under the term mind, into force, though his doctrine on this subject is obscure; but with great emphasis and great reiteration, he denies that judgment as mind or consciousness or cognition can be rendered in terms of motion. ”

“ The doctrine that motion as speed can be transferred from one particle to another is incomprehensible, or, to use his language, is unknowable, or, to use my language, it is absurd. We must not believe incomprehensible, unknowable, or absurd things. Since the days of Euclid, we are accustomed to the doctrine of reductio ad absurdum in scientific logic. If we can reduce a proposition to absurdity we reject it. ”

“ Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion; but motion and rest as commonly conceived are only relatively distinguished, nor are those bodies always truly at rest which commonly are taken to be so.” In the last clause it is apparent that Newton himself was conscious of an illusion in the common conception of the term rest, and it is plain from his entire discussion that his term inertia stood for real force, although many scholars since his time have denied this proposition. ”

“ A body impelled by the hand is clearly perceived to move, and to move in a definite direction: there seems at first sight no possibility of doubting that its motion is real, or that it is towards a given point. ”

“ Although the law of the persistence of energy or the correlation of forces is established, yet a few apprehend gravity to be an occult force, as attraction and repulsion involving actio in distans; yet gravity, when it is understood as a mode of motion, is so simple that all of its laws can be derived by the Euclidean process from the law of the persistence of energy. ”

“ Habit, almost, if not quite, disables us from thinking of appearance except as something seen; and though phenomenon has a more generalized meaning, yet we cannot rid it of associations with appearance, which is its verbal equivalent. When, therefore, Philosophy proves that our knowledge of the external world can be but phenomenal—when it concludes that the things of which we are conscious are appearances ”

“ The world moves by. Houses and men are on the wing, landscape and animals are in flight, yet all this motion in the external world is an illusion which I soon learn to correct. I and my railway coach are the moving bodies. Every time I look out of the window I correctly interpret the motion in this manner. ”

“ Consider a tower a thousand feet high, from which there projects an arm so that a cannonball falling from it will strike the ground outside of the base of the tower. Now let a ball be dropped from this arm, and you say it falls to the ground in a straight line. This is not true; the cannonball and the earth both have the motion of the earth in rotation about its axis; the path of the cannonball, therefore, has two components, one in the direction of rotation and another in the direction of fall. Its path, therefore, is in the direction of fall and rotation. ”

“ The man is conscious that he can move himself, though he is not conscious that the molecular motion in his body is motion, but he is conscious that it produces the effect of molar motion, and he calls this unknown something force. ”

“ This certitude is that the acceleration of a body in its proper motion is deflection of its particles. Thus, when a ship is moving in one direction at a certain rate, and the captain is walking from stem to stern at the same rate, his body is deflected by the ship as molar motion in one direction and by motility in the opposite direction; that is, there is a double system of deflection of the particles of his body that compensate one another. ”

“ With him motion is derived from force, not force from motion, and from this force he derives change and persistence; the absolute of change he explains as persistence of force. Then he derives extension from force, and vaguely derives kind from force, and leaves force standing as the substrate of the substrate—the substrate of that which we call matter or substance. ”

“ If the angle of incidence is 90 degrees, the angle of reflection is 90 degrees, and the particles return reversely by the paths in which they approached. If the angle of incidence is less than 90 degrees, the angle of reflection is less than 90 degrees. If the angle of incidence is one degree, the angle of deflection is but one degree. In all of these cases the force remains equal, and in all of these cases the effect remains equal to the cause, but the force cannot be said to be equal to the cause or to the effect, for the cause is angle of incidence, and the effect is angle of reflection. ”

“ Molar motion is the only motion that can be seen directly by the eye without instrumental aid. These molar motions have been so often inferred and verified that the concept is intuitional in every human mind. The concept of stellar motion has also been verified, and the concept is intuitive with some but not with all minds, but the concept of stellar motion has the same validity as the concept of molar motion. The concept of molecular motion, though not intuitional to most people, is just as valid as that of stellar or molar motion. ”

“ Now the sun is a much larger body than the earth, and for this reason the materials in its outer crust have high specific gravity, and by reason of this higher specific gravity the solid crust must always be thinner, and perhaps this thinner crust cannot be supported against the stresses and strains produced by the stellar motion of the sun, and the stresses and strains developed in the crust itself and coming from the molten nucleus. ”

“ Under favorable circumstances I can see the earth turn toward the sun, down in the front when looking at the sun, and up as my back is turned. I have often experimented in this manner with both the sun and the moon, when I have been traveling on the desert, and I can see their rising and setting as the rotation of the earth. ”

“ Of the illusions we have already set forth the missensations and the misperceptions, and of the delusions we have set forth the hallucinations and the specters. In considering fallacious apprehensions we discover misapprehensions and phantasms. Let us first set forth the nature of misapprehensions.
We are conscious of pressure when bodies impinge against us, and we are conscious of push when we impinge against other bodies; we are therefore conscious of energy both from an active standpoint and from a passive standpoint. But the energy of which we are conscious is that of molar bodies. ”

“ We must now turn our attention to the fallacies of apprehension, which are derived from hallucinations, and which first become specters, and then in the stage of apprehension become phantasms. By contemplating hallucinations as phantasms, another stage in the development of delusion is produced. When we consider specters in action we consider phantasms.
When we dream we often go abroad, and the specters of our dreams are engaged in activities. It is from this phenomenon that the primitive mind reaches the conclusion that our ghosts may leave the body. ”

“ But a body exerts this force only when another force impressed upon it endeavors to change its condition, and the exercise of this force may be considered both as resistance and impulse; it is resistance, in so far as the body for maintaining its present state, withstands the force impressed; it is impulse, in so far as the body, by not easily giving way to the impressed force of another, endeavors to change the state of that other. ”

“ The metaphysician takes propositions to express judgments, as they are formed before the phenomena are properly understood by science, to be valid, and then finding that which science ultimately discovers, takes it also to be valid, and discovers in the world a set of contradictions. ”

“ It is thus that the actions of men are attributed to ghosts—perhaps wise actions when they go out and return to us with information from the external world; perhaps foolish actions when they take possession of us while our ghosts are away. ”

“ On the earth we discover four partially differentiated bodies: air, water, rocks, and the great central body. Geologists have established the theory that this great central body is in a trans-fluid condition, due to pressure, and that thus its heat cannot be transmuted into structural motion. ”

“ In the same manner the ghosts of others may come to us in our dreams, and be their cause. They may come to us in states of ecstasy, and make us perform many wonderful deeds; they may come to us in hypnotism and become foreign tenants of the body to do their own sweet will; they may come to us in states of intoxication and perform antics in our bodies and revel in delight, for in insanity they take more permanent possession of the body, and our lives will be controlled by foreign residents. ”