Fin (anatomy)

“ Even to the heart of the particles it penetrated, and the particles of the particles became lonely.
The vast emptiness which surrounds the universe, was not filled with things seen, with sun or moon or stars; it stretched boundless, penetrating everywhere, disuniting everything, body from body, particle from particle.
In emptiness the trees spread their roots, themselves empty; in emptiness rose phantom temples, palaces and houses—all empty; and in the emptiness moved restless Man, himself empty and light, like a shadow. ”

“ An atom of matter is divisible to infinity—a single grain of sand being, by a mental process, capable of disintegration so great, that were each portion to be separated from its fellow by only the millionth of an inch, yet the vast concave of the dome, the walls of the sidereal heaven, the awful height and depths of space, the dizzy steeps of the great Profound, would not afford room to hold them all, even though the worlds were rushed out of being for accommodation's sake. Yet not one of these portions would be spirit, because that is indivisible; they can never be. ”

“ And therefore, if his idea of eternity be infinite, so is his idea of immensity ; they are both finite or infinite alike.
22. The power of annihilation proves a vacuum. Farther, those who assert the impossibility of space existing without matter, must not only make body infinite, but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any part of matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies of the universe in a perfect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. ”

“ If, however, that spirit departs from the mechanism of our bodies, then the controlling and governing influence is gone; and the mechanism, robbed of its life, ceases to work, ceases to fulfil its functions, and ceases to exist in that particular form.
Just as it is with ourselves, so it is with the Universe. For look where we will, from the smallest atom to the great aggregation of atoms, as our earth, or even to the more stupendous orbs of heaven, the working of a secret and mysterious power or spirit meets our gaze. ”

“ Anaxagoras (whose doctrine savors of atomism) held God to be an infinite self-moving mind; that this divine infinite Mind, not inclosed in any body, is the efficient cause of all things; out of the infinite matter consisting of similar parts, everything being made according to its species by the divine mind, who when all things were at first confusedly mingled together, came and reduced them to order. ”

“ How can we imagine that the onslaught of an atom, striking downwards or dashing in from any direction, could force the soul to definite and necessary reasonings or impulses or into any reasonings, impulses or thoughts at all, necessary or otherwise? And what of the soul's resistance to bodily states? What movement of atoms could compel one man to be a geometrician, set another studying arithmetic or astronomy, lead a third to the philosophic life? ”

“ I then placed these mind atoms as being diffused in the space occupied by the body and lying even between the atoms of its material composition. If, at death, this mind is merely withdrawn from the body—all of which I worked upon as already determined—would it not occupy in the spirit world the same space and retain the same shape of the human form from which it had fled? ”

“ Even the aetherial atoms, which form the foundation stones of the universe, have their own purpose to fulfil in the glorious scheme of the Universe conceived by the Eternal Infinite; and to suppose that a star has no purpose to fulfil, no task to perform, is to suppose something altogether opposed to the teaching of all Philosophy. Why even man, with his finite wisdom, would not be so foolish, so unwise, as to make a star, and set it in the firmament of heaven for no purpose at all! ”

“ On the contrary, Every body has a surface. But every body which has a surface is finite; because surface is the term of a finite body. Therefore all bodies are finite. The same applies both to surface and to a line. Therefore nothing is infinite in magnitude. ”

“ Does it not circulate about us on purpose to serve us? Now if this flame does not turn, and if on the contrary it is our earth that turns, I would fain know how it comes to be so well placed in the centre of the universe, as it were the focus or the heart of all nature. I would fain know also how it comes to pass that a globe of so subtle matter never slips on any side in that immense space that surrounds it, and wherein it seems to stand with reason that all fluid bodies ought to yield to the impetuosity of that flame. ”

“ Anaximander thought the universe originally was a bath of flames, or a ring of fire broken up into sun, moon, and stars, while the earth remained balanced like a column in the centre. Anaximenes, again, said that "Air ruled over all things; and the Soul, being Air, ruled in man." ”

“ And even finite spirit, whilst fully retaining, indeed deepening, its own character, can and does penetrate finite spirit through and through,—the law of Physics, which does not admit more than one body in any one place, having here no kind of application,—so that the Infinite Spirit is at once conceived unspiritually, if He is conceived as supplanting, and not as penetrating, stimulating, and transforming the finite spirits whom He made into an increasing likeness to Him, their Maker. ”

“ We may fairly write the Universe in either way, thus: Atoms-producing-consciousness; or Consciousness-produced-by-atoms. Atoms alone, or consciousness alone, are precisely equal mutilations of the truth. If, without believing in a God, I still continue to talk of what the world 'essentially is,' I am just as much entitled to define it as a place in which my nose itches, or as a place where at a certain corner I can get a mess of oysters for twenty cents, as to call it an evolving nebula differentiating and integrating itself. ”

“ Whatever is real is finite. The extended world and space — the world-process and time — all are finite. Time, Becoming, and Evil are the corruptions of Eternity, Being, and Perfection. Eternity is not the negation of Time, but the ideal into which Time is ultimately to pass. Matter is a form of Force. Force implies a sense of effort, hence intelligence and will. An atom is a constant manifestation of divine Force or Will exercised at a definite point. ”

“ Hence men imagined gods, and attributed those mighty phenomena of nature—earthquakes, tempests, lightning and thunder, and dire eclipses of sun and moon, to the vaguely visible powers which they imagined they saw. There was indeed a soul or spirit of the universe, as there was a soul or spirit of every individual thing that constituted it. But this was only a finer system of atoms after all. All else is convention or dream; the only realities are Atoms and Emptiness, Matter and Space. ”

“ These atoms compose fire and the soul. It is the soul-atom—one being inserted between every two of the other atoms100—which gives these their movement; and it is from all the soul-atoms uniformly disposed throughout the whole body that the body gets its movement, whence also (though it must be admitted in an unintelligible manner) comes the power of perception, which equally depends on movement, and the thought arising thence, of this same body. ”

“ The signs thereof are what the scholars call 'Laws of Nature,' as the force of gravitation and all chemical and physical laws. These alone can be signs of life of the Almighty. And still we are not sure that they issue from the supreme Power.
"Our inner consciousness tells us that the supreme Life cannot be finite, temporal. But the sensible signs of the supreme Life according to our faulty perception are temporal and point to an end. The Universe that we perceive is not a perpetuum mobile. The laws of motion that we know all come to a standstill. ”

“ If, on the other hand, each part feels the entire object, and if each magnitude is divisible to infinity, the result is that, for a single object, there will be an infinity of sensations in each part of the soul; and, so much the more, an infinity of images in the principle that directs us. ”

“ Further, a very fatal addition and burdensome accessory of the parallelistic theory is involved in the two corollaries it has above and beneath it. On the one hand there is the necessity for attributing soul to everything. These mythologies of atom-souls, molecule-souls, this hatred and love which are the inner aspects even of the simple facts of attraction and repulsion among the elements, fit better into the nature-philosophy of Empedocles and Anaxagoras than into ours. ”

“ Let us suppose the mind of man to be like a looking-glass, wherein the images of all the neighbouring bodies imprint themselves. Now what being was able to stamp within us the image of the infinite, if the infinite never existed? Who can put in a looking-glass the image of a chimerical object which is not in being, and which was never placed against the glass? This image of the infinite is not a confused collection of finite objects, which the mind may mistake for a true infinite. It is the true infinite of which we have the thought and idea. ”

“ How we cling to our little atom of life, that is so small and yet so huge, and, placed directly before our eyes as it is, assumes grand proportions that block out the far off and dimly seen plains of eternity—very misty, very vague, are they to our earthly, filmy eyes. ”

“ No number of material atoms, although eternal and endowed with mechanical force, can explain the unity and order of the universe, and therefore the supposition of their existence does not free us from the necessity of believing in a single intelligent cause—a Supreme Mind—to move and mould, combine and adjust, the ultimate atoms of matter into a single orderly system. There at once rises the question, Is it really necessary to believe both matter and mind to be eternal? ”

“ This force of atomic attraction has its centre in the causal body, a kind of sensitive plate on which are registered all those vibrations which disturb or affect human vehicles during incarnation. This body is, in effect, the present abode of the soul, it represents the terminal point of human consciousness, [67] the real centre of man. ”

“ Is it really necessary to forsake the finite to reach the infinite—whatever that term may be taken to mean? Do we not often better realise the infinity of the sky by looking at it through the twigs of a tree?
For the craving itself, in its old mystic form, we can have nothing but sympathy. ”

“ What baffles me, what I find unimaginable, transcending every faculty I possess—transcending, I humbly submit, every faculty you possess—is the notion that out of those physical tremors you can extract things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, thought, and emotion. You may say, or think, that this issue of consciousness from the clash of atoms is not more incongruous than the flash of light from the union of oxygen and hydrogen. ”

“ All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite. And, when all things were together, none of them could be distinguished for their smallness. For air and aether prevailed over all things, being both of them infinite; for amongst all things these are the greatest both in quantity and size. [1] R. P. 151.
(2) For air and aether are separated off from the mass that surrounds the world, and the surrounding mass is infinite in quantity. ”

“ P. Of each living material form, the sphere, or at least some sphere, was the cause. Matter, considered simply by itself, is dead, and can only [96] live by the influx of a surrounding sphere or spirit. It may be said at the last synthesis, that the general sphere even of each microscopic monad that is in process of becoming vitalized, as well as of the great nebulous mass that is to form a universe, is the Spirit of the Infinite Deity, which is present with atoms in the degree of atoms, as well as with worlds in the degree of worlds. ”

“ So that, instead of the infinitude of worlds which now exist, which flash and sparkle in the heavens, and in their intricate, elaborate, and mazy motions move through the vast infinity like stately armies on the march, there would only be one agglomeration of matter, a silent and solitary mass existing in the vast abyss of space. ”

“ Only the Infinite can comprehend the one or possess the other, but through constant striving all may attain to loftiest heights of Spiritual unfoldment. Yes, through constant striving for higher unfoldment, both physically embodied and freed Spirits grow wiser, purer and stronger. Spirit bodies being organized from atomic aura, it follows that if the aura be sufficiently pure, even as wind may pass through the meshes of a gossamer web, so may the sublimated atoms of Spirit bodies penetrate any aggregation of grosser atoms. ”

“ Before one can understand the influence of thoughts upon the physical body he must learn the occult relationship between Cosmic Mind as expressed in the man, and atomic mind as expressed in his flesh. ”

“ Atoms of unutterable minuteness are streaming into the unseen atmosphere every second from the souls and bodies of the human race. When the soul seeks, aspires after God, the most vital of all atoms go forth with the breath, as light from the sun to the earth. ”

“ The Quadrature of the Circle or, as it is called in the vernacular, "Squaring the Circle." The Duplication of the Cube. The Trisection of an Angle. Perpetual Motion. The Transmutation of the Metals. The Fixation of Mercury. The Elixir of Life.
The Transmutation of the Metals, the Fixation of Mercury, and the Elixir of Life might perhaps be properly [3] classed as one, under the head of the Philosopher's Stone, and then Astrology and Magic might come in to make up the mystic number Seven.
The expression "Follies of Science" does not seem a very appropriate one. Real science has no follies. ”