Force

“ When we exclaim, "What force!" on seeing a head with prominent bushy brows, incisive nose, deep-set eyes, and a massive jaw, we are indeed expressing our recognition of force, but only of the sort of force underlying instincts of aggression and brutality. ”

“ In the beginning was FORCE—force homogeneous but unstable, and necessarily tending to differentiation and heterogeneity; splitting into opposites, standing off into polarities, ramifying into attractions and repulsions, light, heat, magnetism, and electricity; and mounting up through the stages of physical, vital, and neural to the mental life itself, with all its varied and endless phenomena, as revealed in the languages, laws, institutions, arts, sciences, and religions of the world. Force is "the ultimate of all ultimates," the "Absolute Reality," the "Unconditioned Cause." ”

“ Force is the will of God and is omnipotent, and power is that will in manifest, directed by the Breath.
17. There is power in the winds, a power in the waves, a power in the lightning's stroke, a power in the human arm, a power in the eye. ”

“ They belong to divine Principle, and support All force mental the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, “Thus far and no farther.”
Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. ”

“ Nobody ever delighted in the joy of the conflict more heartily than he—not only the conflict of mind against mind, but also—and perhaps even more—the conflict of physical force against physical force. ”

“ As near as I can remember, I find the side that uses force, or that uses the most force, invariably turns me against it. If, as I read, I find that both sides are using force, I find myself against both sides. ”

“ Thus, from whatever side we look at this question—whether the common-sense of mankind, the logical analysis of the relation between cause and effect, or the study of the working of our own intellects in the interpretation of Nature—we seem led to the same conclusion—that the notion of force is one of those elementary forms of thought with which we can no more dispense than we can with the notion of space or of succession. ”

“ This conception of force or power is derived from the consciousness of our own power to move our limbs, and perhaps too of passions, temptations, sentiments to move or oppose our wills. This power is most distinctly felt when it is resisted. The effort which is necessary when we choose to do what we have barely strength to do, impresses on us more clearly the sense of a force residing in ourselves capable of overcoming resistance. ”

“ But when one tried to think it out, what in the world became of force considered as an objective entity? Force, even the most materialistic of philosophers will agree with the most idealistic, is nothing but a name for the cause of motion. ”

“ Force, Force, everywhere Force; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre of that. "There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it; how else could it rot?" ”

“ There is therefore but one response possible from us. Force, Force to the utmost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world, and cast every selfish Dominion down in the dust. ”

“ If we may not read the meaning of the great central force in the light of that force which we carry in the will, how can we warrantably interpret the laws of nature, in the light of that which we carry in the intellect? ”

“ Nations are built up and moved by another force [a force other than science and reason] which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable: that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. ”

“ Force, I say, is a spiritual virtue, an invisible power, which by accidental external violence is caused by motion, and communicated and infused into bodies which are inert by nature, giving them an active life of marvellous power. ”

“ In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know of the essence of life. ”

“ And at the same time, a kind and mysterious force sways my head-stock, sways most incalculably, and governs my whole motion. This force is not a driving force, but a subtle directing force, beneath whose grip my bright steel body is flexible as a dipping highroad. ”

“ What is force? I say that force is a spiritual, incorporate and invisible power, which for a brief duration is produced in bodies that by accidental violence are displaced from their natural state of inertia. ”

“ Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest power in the development of men. Yet we have merely been playing with it and have never seriously studied it as we have the physical forces. ”

“ I possess an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control, overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. ”

“ But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in. ”

“ Force is the active, moving, and forming principle; it is indivisibly joined with matter: the operating force in the whole of the world is the Godhead.”453 “By the names World-soul, World-reason, Nature, Universal Law, Providence, Fate, the same thing is indicated, the one Primal Force determining everything with absolute regularity, interpenetrating the whole world.” ”

“ Tell me, what is a form of force? What is force itself?
Büchner. It is not my duty to define force. I accept the definition of the physicists.
[pg 644] Reader. This is exactly what I expected to hear. Yet when a man undertakes to philosophize on anything, he ought to know very distinctly what that thing is. Do you make any difference between “forces” and “powers”?
Büchner. No, sir, as is evident from my terminology.
Reader. Do you discriminate between “force” and “quantity of action”?
Büchner. No, sir.
Reader. Do you identify “force” with “quantity of movement”? ”

“ By the persistence of force is meant the principle—one now established with so much certainty as to command the assent of every thinking man who examines the subject—that in the ordinary course of nature no force is either ever originated or ever destroyed, but only changed in form. ”

“ we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and we call that freedom. ”

“ The meaning is that every force postulates a resistance on which it can work, every light a shadow as its foil, every convex a concave, every influx a receptacle, every reign a kingdom, every sovereign a people, every workman a first matter, every conqueror something to overcome. ”

“ The force implied in this may be described as love-force, soul-force, or, more popularly but less accurately, passive resistance. This force is indestructible. He who uses it perfectly understands his position. We have an ancient proverb which literally means “One negative cures thirty-six diseases.” The force of arms is powerless when matched against the force of love or the soul. ”

“ Are we taunted with believing? Those who taunt us must supply for their part something more than inference ere we trust all to their wisdom. The "Force" that is so much invoked, what is it so far as the definitions of science go? Effects we see; Force never. All statements as to the nature of force are pure dogma. It is declared that there are necessary and eternal laws of matter. ”

“ It breaks incessantly against the atoms of bodies, and so furnishes the secondary streams of force that maintain the constitution and determine the phenomena of the material universe." [345] Force, then, is the act of the immanent Deity, who puts forth unceasingly from every point in the realm of space his creative and sustaining power. ”

“ Force.—Force is that which can produce, change or destroy motion.
We see a body move; we know there must be a cause; that cause we call force. We see a body in motion come to rest; this effect must have had a cause; that cause we attribute to force. ”

“ The problem of force meets us everywhere, and I prefer to encounter it in the world of physical phenomena before reaching that of living actions. It is only the name for the incomprehensible cause of certain changes known to our consciousness, and assumed to be outside of it. ”

“ The word 'force' in the last sentence shows the transition. Undoubtedly force in the sense of physical and military force has had a great influence in the formation both of religions and nations. We may say that such force is 'essential'; as a proof of the energy and often as a condition of the durability of the institutions. ”

“ FORCE, n.
"Force is but might," the teacher said— "That definition's just." The boy said naught but thought instead, Remembering his pounded head: "Force is not might but must!" ”

“ Nothing but forces. In God himself we found no higher conception; but all his forces were only one. The supreme force could not be other than supreme goodness and wisdom, ever-living, ever-active. (Theoph.) ”

“ But just as we draw from the stores of our own consciousness this idea of "Power," of force, of muscular or mental energy, precisely in the same way we are justified in drawing the idea of "purpose" in the direction of that energy. ”

“ The conception of force as the originator of motion in matter, without bodily contact or the intervention of any intermedium, is essential to the right interpretation of physical phenomena;... its exertion makes itself manifest to our personal consciousness by the peculiar sensation of effort;... and it [force] affords a point of contact, a connecting link between the two great departments of being—between mind and matter—the one as its originator, the other as its recipient. ”

“ We can take in and believe any marvels about the changes in the structure and position of bodies caused by the operation of forces. We ignorantly fancy we know what forces must be, and can imagine anything that is set before us that is at all in analogy with what we ourselves can do by exertions of force. ”

“ Does the perfect form convey something of the same thing that physical force—an army in arms, a battleship—conveys? In any case it was there, that inherent masterfulness, though not in its highest form. ”

“ Force, he contends, is the ultimate and deepest truth of the universe. All forms of consciousness, he says, are derived as experiences of force. All sense experiences as in the objective series, all subjective feeling or thought, everything known or knowable, is a manifestation of the one universal force or energy. This universal force, I contend, is, first, spirit or mind force; second, electric force controlled by mind force. ”

“ If we call it all spirit, then we believe that spirit has force, that it offers a resistance; in other words, that it is, in one of its aspects, what we call matter. I cannot believe that everything can be accounted for by motion or by what we call force, because there is something that recognizes force. ”

“ What is power? You may say it is force. And what is force? "Well, force is a form of energy." What is energy? "Well," you reply, "it is a strong inward movement whose strength is very impressive." Some one says "power is ability." And ability? "Well, that is the innate power to do something." And so we get to use our word in the attempted definition itself, which is simply talking in a circle. ”

“ And if it will not bear scrutiny, then it clearly does not represent reality.
There is a sense in which words like power, force, or energy, are distinguished from activity. They may be used to stand for something that does not happen at all, but somehow remains in a state of suspended animation, or in a region between non- existence and existence. I do not think it worth while to discuss this at present, and shall pass at once to the signification in which force means force in exercise—in other words, activity. ”

“ To those who think thus, it must now however be pointed out, that the universal truth above illustrated under its various aspects, is a necessary corollary from the persistence of force. Setting out with the proposition that force can neither come into existence, nor cease to exist, the several foregoing general conclusions inevitably follow. Each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force: no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought, or a feeling. ”

“ That achievement implies more than the mere force. Or rather, it involves a quality of the force with which the language of mechanism does not reckon. It assumes the idea which gives direction to the force, an ideal quality of the force. ”

“ Of such a process we have no experience, no idea." "We experience as little concerning force as a motive power, as concerning the necessity of a movement." Force is said to be the constraining element! ”

“ Physical force, as distinguished from moral force, is a term used to express the idea of material force, the action of one body on another, compelling the weaker to yield to the stronger by mere animal strength or mechanical power. As moral force may be either good or evil, injurious or uninjurious, according to its kind, its object, its spirit, or its manner of application; so may physical force be good or evil, injurious or uninjurious, according to the same considerations. ”

“ By some it may be said that the term force as here used, is used metaphorically—that to speak of men as impelled in certain directions by certain desires, is a figure of speech and not the statement of a physical fact. ”