Core

“ The coil carries an index needle moving over a scale, and there is generally an iron core in the interior of the coil but fixed and independent of it. The coil is so situated that, in its zero position when no current is passing through it, the plane of the coil is parallel to the direction of the lines of force of the field. When a current is passed through the coil it rotates in the field and displaces the index over the scale against the control of a spiral spring like the hairspring of a watch. ”

“ Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. ”

“ And as within our members and whole frame The energy of mind and power of soul Is mixed and latent, since create it is Of bodies small and few, so lurks this fourth, This essence void of name, composed of small, And seems the very soul of all the soul, And holds dominion o'er the body all. And by like reason wind and air and heat Must function so, commingled through the frame, And now the one subside and now another In interchange of dominance, that thus From all of them one nature be produced, Lest heat and wind apart, and air apart, Make sense to perish, by disseverment. ”

“ According to the Pythagoreans and Platonists, there is a life infused throughout all things ... an intellectual and artificial fire—an inward principle, animal spirit, or natural life, producing or forming within, as art doth without—regulating, moderating, and reconciling the various motions, qualities, and parts of the mundane system. By virtue of this life, the great masses are held together in their ordinary courses, as well as the minutest particles governed in their natural motions, according to the several laws of attraction, gravity, electricity, magnetism, and the rest. ”

“ What determines the shape assumed and how the transformation is effected is not clear. One may speculate as to the influence of human thought, individual or in the mass, and quite probably the explanation when found will include this influence as a factor—but I am intent here not on theorizing, but on a narrative of observed happenings. One thing is clear—the nature-spirit form is objective—objective, that is, in the sense in which we apply that term to a stone, a tree, and a human body. ”

“ If we are artistically complete in our inner natures, then we comprehend why the crystals love their regular forms. To understand the difference between organic and inorganic matter, you have again to study first your own inner consciousness, and to examine its various stages, as they lead up from disorganized sensations to clear and organic reason. For the forms of matter in the outer world are symbolic, are precisely analogous, stage for stage, to these processes of the inner life. ”

“ For just as food, dispersed through all the pores Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame, Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff For other nature, thus the soul and mind, Though whole and new into a body going, Are yet, by seeping in, dissolved away, Whilst, as through pores, to all the frame there pass Those particles from which created is This nature of mind, now ruler of our body, Born from that soul which perished, when divided Along the frame. ”

“ Various classes of facts unite to prove117 that the law of metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the unknowable which we call motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transferable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and thought ”

“ Let us begin with a consideration of the instruments of the Ego, and the material with which and through which the Ego works. Let us realize that the physical body of man is identical in substance with all other forms of matter, and that its atoms are continually changing and being replaced, the material being drawn from the great storehouse of matter, and that there is a Oneness of matter underlying all apparent differences of form and substance. ”

“ As a basis for the theory which I set myself to formulate, I took what I shall term 'mind atoms.' As I have before said, we cannot regard the mind force as a material thing; but, as a contradictory fact, we know that it is something, and further than that generality we are ignorant. Then, as the mind force governs alike every portion of the body, this indeterminable something of which it is composed, I reasoned, must be in one portion as in another. ”

“ And the elements of human nature are unchanging—like the elements of chemistry; and they combine in the same unchanging fashions. Imagine a reconstructed universe without sulphur or nitrogen; or imagine elements that combine to one purpose in this corner of the laboratory combining to another purpose in that. ”

“ Those particles, whose peculiar agglomeration or arrangement, we call a vegetable to-day, pass into, and form part of, an animal to-morrow; and that animal again, by the falling asunder of its constituent atoms, and the different approximation and agglomeration of the same,—or, of the same with other atoms,—is transformed into some other substance presenting a new assemblage of qualities. To this simple exposition of the phenomena of nature (which, you will observe, is not explaining their wonders, for that is impossible, but only observing them,) we are led by the exercise of our senses. ”

“ When we examine those instances of nature’s workmanship which we can take to pieces and understand, we find them in the highest degree artificial in our own sense of the word. Take, for example, the structure of an eye, or of the skeleton of an animal,—what complexity and what artifice! ”

“ Now things that we call natural are either substances or functions and attributes of substances. As substances I class the simple bodies-fire, earth, and the other terms of the series-and all things composed of them; for example, the heaven as a whole and its parts, animals, again, and plants and their parts. By attributes and functions I mean the movements of these and of all other things in which they have power in themselves to cause movement, and also their alterations and reciprocal transformations. ”

“ Solidity, extension, space — the foundation properties of the material world — mean, as has been said above, certain movements and energies of our own bodies, and exist in our minds in the shape of feelings of force, allied with visible and tactile, and other sensible impressions. ”

“ The dependence of all the systems of worlds upon each other, every dust composing each individual globe being “weighed in a balance,” the adjustment of the powers by which every physical condition is ordered, the disposition of matter in the mass of the earth, and the close relation of the kingdoms of nature,—are all revelations of natural truths, exalting the mind to the divine conception of the universe. ”

“ If we refer to phenomena of sense perception as forces of matter in general, then this generalized matter is nothing but an abstract conception. But if we mean by the term sense perception the various concrete substances, then the general element which embraces the differences of things and pervades and controls them is force producing concrete effects. And whether we say matter or force, the mental which science is studying, not with its hands, but with its brain, the so-called essence, nature, cause, ideal, superior or spiritual, is the generality comprising the special things. ”

“ If the latter view is adopted, the spiritual nucleus of man's nature obtains but slight attention except on the side of its connection with the surrounding organic world, and consequently what this nucleus is in itself as an experience recedes into the background, and descriptions and explanations in scientific or philosophical form step into the foreground. ”

“ Remember, in this respect, how the picture of the threefold psycho-physical structure of man, which has proved a master-key for unlocking the most varied scientific problems, was first built up. There, 'body' and 'soul' represented a polarity which is obviously one of the first order. ”

“ Taking this as our method, we ask, What is the affirmative factor in the whole creation, and in ourselves as included in the creation, and, as we found in the first lecture, this factor is Spirit—that invisible power which concentrates-the primordial ether into forms, and endows those forms with various modes of motion, from the simply mechanical motion of the planet up to the volitional motion in man. ”

“ But many pages might be filled with examples of varying conceptions of the soul, the major number of which (for the idea [Pg 211] of it as a mouse, snake, etc., must not be forgotten) have as their nucleus its ethereal nature and freedom from the limitations of solid earth, although round that nucleus gather some more concrete ideas for the mind, desiring something more substantial than symbols, to grasp. ”

“ But once the substance of things physical is found to consist in units of force, conditioning space—force-forms as we have called them—of diverse characters, the whole universe of matter becomes a wonderful study, radiant with inspiration, for its solution and meaning are enfolded in its every atom, and in the very attributes by which they are manifested to our sense perceptions they hold and declare their message to the Perceiver within. ”

“ The qualities of things admitted on all hands to be qualities of the external (or object) world—called the Primary Qualities, Resistance and Extension,—are modes of our muscular energies; the qualities that do not of themselves suggest externality, or objectivity,—the secondary qualities, as Heat, Colour, &c.—are our passive sensibilities, and do not contain muscular energy. ”

“ What is the world made of? According to the ancient doctrine of the Four Elements, all things are formed of fire, air, earth, and water; and the varieties and differences in the properties of bodies depend entirely on the proportion in which these great principles are mingled. ”

“ In the preceding chapter we have very briefly indicated the nature of the steps by which reflective thought comes to distinguish sharply between a physical and a psychical order of existence. The physical order, when the concept has been brought into its complete shape by the inclusion of my own body and all its parts, is thought of as a system comprising all the bodies in the universe, that is, all the existences which are of the same kind as those which I directly perceive by means of the special senses. ”

“ The matter, which is the direct position of God, which fills the whole universe, which is the time in a state of tension and motion, the formed space, the heavy primary essence, I call the Primary matter, the matter of the world, cosmic matter, Æther. The æther is the first realization of God, the eternal position of the same. It is the first matter of creation. ”

“ Directly in connection with the material body, but consisting of something distinctly different in kind, higher, finer, and interior to it, is the natural mind, but these two, the natural mind and the material body, work together as a unit. ”

“ There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of it—as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in magnetism and electricity. These forms of manifestation of the external world upon an individual object are destructive to the individuality of the object. ”

“ These three distinct stages of progress from the inorganic world of matter and motion up to man, point clearly to an unseen universe—to a world of spirit, to which the world of matter is altogether subordinate. ”

“ This shows that light is a symbol of Life, Truth, and Love, instead of a vitalizing property of matter. Science Subdivision. reveals one Mind, shining by its own light, and governing its own ideas in perfect harmony. Mind forms the ideas which subdivide and radiate their borrowed light; and this explains this Scripture, “whose seed is in itself.” Ideas “multiply and replenish the earth,” but Mind supports the various ideas constituting the sublimity and magnitude of its creation. ”

“ That notable doctrine known as the correlation of physical forces, or the convertibility into one another of heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity, etc., each being a mode of manifestation of an unknown energy which “lives through all life, extends through all extent,” has its counterpart in the correlation of spiritual forces. ”

“ As we have remarked above, therefore, that material substance of this world, possessing a nature admitting of all possible transformations, is, when dragged down to beings of a lower order, moulded into the crasser and more solid condition of a body, so as to distinguish those visible and varying forms of the world ”

“ More to the point, at this stage of our inquiry, than a formally precise definition of Nature, is a consideration of the motives which lead us to acknowledge as real the facts that we all call physical, — viz. to acknowledge the existence of matter, the laws of natural processes, and the dependence of our own mental life upon these processes. To this aspect of the problem of Nature we accordingly at once proceed. ”

“ When we know the elements out of which our bodies are composed, elements in common to the humblest vegetable plants, can it signify whether the All-Wise combined those elements out of one form more than another, in order to create that in which He has placed the capacity to receive the idea of Himself, and all the varied grandeurs of intellect to which that idea gives birth? ”