Dynamics

“ The word “dynamic” has come to mean, in newspaper language, “energetic and forceful”; but if it meant “illustrating the principles of dynamics,” it ought to be applied to the people in hot climates who sit under banana trees waiting for the fruit to drop into their mouths. I hope that journalists, in future, when they speak of a “dynamic personality,” will mean a person who does what is least trouble at the moment, without thinking of remote consequences. ”

“ I shall avoid, as much as I can, those questions which, though they have elicited the skill of mathematicians, have not enlarged our knowledge of science.
The internal relations of the different branches of the science which we have to study are more numerous and complex than those of any other science hitherto developed. Its external relations, on the one hand to dynamics, and on the other to heat, light, chemical action, and the constitution of bodies, seem to indicate the special importance of electrical science as an aid to the interpretation of nature. ”

“ Movement, rapid movement of some kind, a ride, the hasty survey of a shelf of books, best of all a conversation like this morning's with a visitor for the first time,—amid the felicitous chances of that, at some random turn by the way, he would become aware of shaping purpose: the beam of light or heat would strike down, to illuminate, to fuse and organise the coldly accumulated matter, of reason, of experience. ”

“ Superficially action seems a form of relation ; but it is really radically different. Relation is static ; action dynamic. Relation is the constancy of rest, or the variant of motion ; but action is that which changes relation, which moves or arrests movement.
The “spirit" of relation is accuracy, justice or right. The “spirit” of action is power, whether force or energy, or forces or energies. ”

“ Thus I admit, with the pure dynamist, that the material universe, or successive material universes (if such a solecism is pardonable) , as manifestations of matter and motion, are concatenated with time, are born, run their course, and fade away, as do the clouds of air. But the infinite reservoir of power wherein they occur as disturbances remains. ”

“ But that all that we call "being" is motion: and that all motion is the expression, not of equilibrium, but of equilibrating, or of equilibrium unattained: that life-motions are expressions of equilibrium unattained: that all thought relates to the unattained: that to have what is called being in our quasi-state, is not to be in the positive sense, or is to be intermediate to Equilibrium and Inequilibrium. ”

“ We may, in fact, characterize the situation generally as the intermediate plane between the universal world-condition still in a state of equilibrium, and the concrete action unfolded in all its tendency to movement and reaction, a position which gives to it the characteristics of both extremes, and enables us to pass over from the one to the other. ”

“ Tendency to equilibrium of force, and to permanency of form then, are the characters of that portion of the universe which does not live—the domain of the chemist and physicist.
Tendency to disturb existing equilibrium,—to take on forms which succeed one another in definite cycles, is the character of the living world. ”

“ Balanced, one against the other, in delicate counterpoise, in subtlest interaction of part with part, they sweep on in one majestic system, an equilibrium for ever disturbed, yet ever recovering itself anew, created, it is true, and maintained by countless individual impulses, yet summing up and reflecting all of these in a single, perfect, all-harmonious whole. ”

“ If we should conceive, for example, that the human mind, with its different possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many-sided solid with different surfaces on which it could lie flat, we might liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body. ”

“ Surely, then, in such complex and slowly-evolving movements as those of a nation's life, all the smaller and greater rhythms of which fall within certain general directions, it is impossible that such general directions can be traced by looking at stages that are close together—it is impossible that the effect wrought on any general, direction, by some additional force, can be truly computed from observations extending over but a few years, or but a few generations. ”

“ And thus the ultimate state, forming the limit towards which Evolution carries us, is one in which the kinds and quantities of mental energy daily generated and transformed into motions, are equivalent to, or in equilibrium with, the various orders and degrees of surrounding forces which antagonize such motions. ”

“ All power whatever, that distinguishes man from the brute, that in any respect contributes to his commercial, mental, moral, or human value, is due to union, relation, action and interaction among individuals. [42] In nature we may find illustrations of this truth. Sound, electricity, heat, and light, are forms of force which owe their existence to action, relation, interaction among material particles. They would never arise in a universe of unrelated elements. ”

“ Worlds and systems of worlds are sent whirling, worlds round worlds and systems round systems, in a mazy planetary dance, wherein the slightest tripping, the least excess of momentum or inertia, of tension or traction, in any part, and chaos were come again. Every conceivable entity, ponderable and imponderable, material and immaterial, is replete with force. ”

“ Of course we are: but there is a universal balance throughout nature, and everything finds its level. There is order, when there appears disorder—and no stream runs in one direction, without a counter stream, to restore the equilibrium. ”

“ We are continually pressing with our weight upon the bodies on which we rest, we are continually exerting or resisting the pressure of so-called adhering masses—resistance-points in one dynamic system of which we are ourselves a part. Thus it is that in our exertional action we reveal to our consciousness not only the forms of our own activity but the forms of the dynamic system which contains and yet transcends the Sensible and the Ideal. ”

“ It was natural for the modern mind to picture a dynamic condition of the kind just described, that is, one in which the centre and source, as it were, is a point round which the dynamic condition spreads with steadily diminishing strength as the distance from the point grows. ”

“ Stated in the abstract, the problem is how to explain the origin of purpose in a moving equilibrium—commencing from the solar system and proceeding to a self-feeding engine and pursuing our investigation to the abstract moving equilibrium of forces in which external inimical or favourable forces generate internal forces as a counterbalance, either of opposition or harmony of adjustment. ”

“ We burst as germs into organization, we swell by a common progress into maturity, and we learn to measure by motion what we call Time, till, our motions and our time ceasing, we are thus laid side by side, generation after generation, serving as examples of a similar futurity to those who spring from us, and succeed us. ”

“ If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may or may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at their own sweet will. If resistance is met, its agent complicates the situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain or squeeze. ”

“ But is not this organization itself the work of Nature? The motion or impulse to action, of which he is susceptible, is that not physical? His visible actions, as well as the invisible motion interiorly excited by his will or his thoughts, are equally the natural effects, the necessary consequences, of his peculiar construction, and the impulse he receives from those beings by whom he is always surrounded. ”

“ This formal activity which operates throughout a series of changes and holds them to a single course; that subordinates their aimless flux to its own perfect manifestation; which, leaping the boundaries of space and time, keeps individuals in spite of their being distant in space and remote in time to a uniform type of structure and function: this principle seemed to give insight into the very nature of reality itself. ”

“ Thus a constant equilibrium is maintained in the atmosphere; and thus, by a system of perpetual rotation or everlasting merry-go-round, the same substances serve, indefinitely, to support life of every opposite description. ”

“ Let us consider once more the concept of equilibrium. Inhibition of action through antagonistic impulses, or action returning upon itself, we have defined it; and the line cannot be drawn sharply between these types. The visual analogue for equilibrium may be either symmetrical figure or circle; the excursion from the centre may be either the swing of the pendulum or the sweep of the planet. The RETURN is the essential. Now it is a commonplace of criticism--though the significance of the dictum has never been sufficiently seen--that the great drama, novel, or symphony does return upon itself. ”

“ We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own shape, and in shapes more or less analogous to our own. These are perpetually changing the mode of their existence relatively to us. To express the varieties of these modes, we say, we move, they move; and as this motion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception of the diversities of its course by—it has been, it is, it shall be. ”

“ But, the question may be asked, Granting all this, may not the activity at some time come to an end? May not an equilibrium be finally reached—a state in which, activity having played its part, becoming passes into being, a changeless goal of all preceding change? ”

“ Man commonly begs the question again taking for granted that he captures the forces. A dynamic theory, assigning attractive force to opposing bodies in proportion to the law of mass, takes for granted that the forces of nature capture man. ”

“ We have been brought to the idea of such a correlation between the two impulsions that the action of the one establishes and limits at the same time the action of the other, and that each of them, taken in isolation, does arrive at its highest manifestation just because the other is active. ”

“ A further contribution of equal importance has been the empiric development of a dynamic theory of life; the conception that life is in a state of flux—movement—leading either to construction or destruction. Through the development man has reached he has attained the power by means of his intelligence and understanding of definitely directing to a certain extent this life energy or libido into avenues which serve his interest and bring a real satisfaction for the present day. ”

“ Finally, the rotatory motions that go on in these large masses of matter will come to be understood as due to the cyclical order in which the automatized interests that constitute the dynamic core of the life of this spiritual reality, an order realized by us all, at least subconsciously, among the routine of habits that determines the most economical and efficient daily efforts of us all. ”

“ To that regulated motion, to that necessary action, which conspired to the production of life, succeeds that determinate motion, that series of action which concurs to produce the dissolution of the dead carcass; the dispersion of its parts; the formation of new combinations, from which result new beings; and which, as we have before seen, is the immutable order of active Nature. ”

“ But if you look closer, you will see that in each one of those established principal currents there are countless thousands—millions—of tiny currents all turning and twisting across, and back, and up, and down in every direction,—weaving themselves together,—pulling themselves apart,—criss-crossing, clashing,—interlacing,—tangled and confused,—and these are the individual lives. ”

“ It affirms that life is a product of organization. The materialist begins at the bottom and evolves motion from inaction, power from inertia, organization from matter in mass, the greater from the less, life from death. ”

“ Imagine this system of circulation once set up, and nothing is more natural than that it should continue while the earth revolves; indeed, a glance at any current chart of the world will suffice to show the force of this reasoning. ”

“ The interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps through which it is attained. This is the charm of running water, sea-waves, the flight of birds, and the locomotion of animals. ”

“ And since inertia and attraction had been recognized as the most important and fundamental causes of material processes, it was a natural thing to regard the laws of association, which had been compared with them, as the fundamental phenomena of mental life, and to derive from them as manifold and important consequences as had been done in the case of the physical world. ”

“ It is recognized that every effect has a sufficient and a commensurate cause, not en bloc, but in matter, energy, mind, and spirit. Action and reaction are definite mathematical processes. The parallelogram of force tends everywhere to equilibrium and secures further action and new processes under universal law. ”

“ We may conceive of momentary equilibrium of small portions of a society, just as, in the case of such a group of dancers, we may conceive of any moment as possibly representing an absence of collision in some one part of the company, although, in other parts, many collisions are taking place. ”