Indestructibility

“ But such an eventual chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of indestructibility; for we need only leave the dead animal or plant containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay—organs, tissues, and protoplasm altogether.
To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately by others. ”

“ The principles of indestructibility or conservation of matter and energy, flow from the preceding ones, and are exhibited in mental actions as well as in physical ones. Whilst the universal experience of mankind has not yet afforded us a single well verified instance of actual creation or destruction of matter or energy, it has supplied us with plenty of examples of apparent destruction and creation of each of them. {109}But scientific knowledge corrects the uncertain testimony of consciousness ”

“ Unconscious, perhaps, of the remote tendency of his own labours, he undermined that doctrine of material heat, which he seemed to support. For, by his advocacy of latent heat, he taught that its movements constantly baffle, not only some of our senses, but all of them; and that, while our feelings make us believe that heat is lost, our intellect makes us believe that it is not lost. Here, we have apparent destructibility, and real indestructibility. To assert that a body received heat without its temperature rising, was to make the understanding correct the touch, and defy its dictates. ”

“ The law of the conservation of vis viva is thus found to be based on the general law of the indestructibility of causes.
"In many cases we see motion cease without having caused another motion or the lifting of a weight. But a force once in existence cannot be annihilated—it can only change its form. And the question therefore arises, what other forms is force, which we have become acquainted with as falling force and motion, capable of assuming? ”

“ Again, the researches of chemists have shown that what the vulgar call corruption, destruction, &c., is nothing but a change of arrangement of the same ingredient elements, the disposition of the same materials into other forms, without the loss or actual destruction of a single atom; and thus any doubts of the permanence of natural laws are discountenanced, and the whole weight of appearances thrown into the opposite scale. One of the most obvious cases of apparent destruction is, when any thing is ground to dust and scattered to the winds. ”

“ Let us admit that matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or [pg 638] not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it be disturbed; what then?
Büchner. Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are unchangeable. ”

“ But in all ages there have been many who believe that the destruction will be only the ruin of the present economy of the world, but not its utter extinction. And surely Peter’s description does not imply annihilation of the matter of the globe. He makes fire the agent of the destruction, and, in order to ascertain the extent of the ruin that will follow, we have only to inquire what effect combustion will have upon matter. The common opinion is, that intense combustion actually destroys or annihilates matter, because it is thereby dissipated. ”

“ We perceive only what is nearest to us, namely, the scattered movements of the pulverized explosions. From them we have to go back, stage by stage, to the original movement.
When a shell bursts, the particular way it breaks is explained both by the explosive force of the powder it contains and by the resistance of the metal. So of the way life breaks into individuals and species. It depends, we think, on two series of causes: the resistance life meets from inert matter, and the explosive force—due to an unstable balance of tendencies—which life bears within itself. ”

“ We have thus learned two things, for, in the first place, we have learned that life is associated with delicacy of construction, and in the next (Art. 220) , that delicacy of construction implies an unstable arrangement of natural forces. We have now to remark that the particular force which is thus used by living beings is chemical affinity. Our bodies are, in truth, examples of an unstable arrangement of chemical forces, and the materials which composed them, if not liable to sudden explosion, like fulminating powder, are yet pre-eminently the subjects of decay. ”

“ But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in bounds, how to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? ”

“ If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could not have been created.
The indestructible must be uncreateable. ”

“ Slowly it dawned upon the mind that force is indestructible—that we cannot imagine force as existing apart from matter—that we cannot even think of matter existing apart from force—that we cannot by any possibility conceive of a cause without an effect, of an effect without a cause, of an effect that is not also a cause. ”

“ Beyond this idea of destruction, any idea such as annihilation is on the face of it absurd. According to modern physical science, it can be demonstrated that all destruction means that which Kapila said ages ago — simply reverting to the cause. ”

“ When the common experience of generations of Adepts in their own spiritual or psychic field of observation, and of the ordinary people in theirs— (i. e., in the domain of physical science) points to the conclusion that there never has been utter annihilation of a single material particle, we are justified we believe, in saying that matter is in destructible though it may change its forms and properties and appear in various degrees of differentiation. ”

“ But finally it is compelled to give way; the force applied becomes too great for its powers of resistance. A crack, beginning at the bottom, is opened, with a fearful crash. The crack widens, and when it is completed to the top a fragment is detached. This fragment is buoyed up to its proper level; and while the loud noise of the disruption is echoing among the hills, and the great waves of its creating are rolling away, the monstrous mass is coming171 slowly to rest, ready to float off with the current to the ocean. ”

“ But whether instability is an element of destruction or of safety, depends wholly upon the sources whence that instability springs.
“The granite hills are not so changeless and abiding as the restless sea. Quiet is no certain pledge of permanence and safety. ”

“ Without gravitation our present material existence would be unthinkable; without a proper observance of it, destruction surely awaits us. This, no doubt, is one of the mills of the gods, but whether it grinds for us or against us depends upon ourselves. ”

“ The gross body disintegrates every time a man dies. The soul not being made of any particles must be indestructible. What do we mean by destruction? Destruction is disintegration of the materials out of which anything is composed. If this glass is broken into pieces, the materials will disintegrate, and that will be the destruction of the glass. Disintegration of particles is what we mean by destruction. It naturally follows that nothing that is not composed of particles can be destroyed, can ever be disintegrated. The soul is not composed of any materials. ”

“ If we consider, we shall see that the destructive forces owe their efficiency to their levelling action, that is, to their influence in reducing the solid part of the earth to the figure of a perfect sphere ”

“ In this world, too, this unceasing change, though it presents at first view a strong tendency to ruin, is, in fact, the grand conservative principle of material things. In a world of life and motion like ours, it is impossible that bodies, especially organic bodies, should not be sometimes subject to violent disarrangements and destruction from the mechanical agencies which exist; and were no chemical changes possible, ultimate and irremediable ruin must be the result. ”

“ This gibberish we hear of creating matter—it is impossible, and surely unsuitable as a weapon. Their misty wall—that may be a force plane, but I know of no such possibility. The artificial substance though—why should any one make it? It but consumes energy, and once made is no more dangerous than ordinary matter, save that there is the possibility of creating it in dangerous position. ”

“ To destroy any power growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in Nature, and they were always discernible. ”

“ Again, everything destroyed is destroyed either in form or matter. (Form is the shape of a thing, matter the body.) Now if the form is destroyed and the matter remains, we see other things come into being. If matter is destroyed, how is it that the supply has not failed in all these years?
If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its place, the new matter must come either from something that is or from something that is not. ”

“ Everything that exists is a dull, latent explosive; but whatever the index of its inertia may be, it represents only an insignificant fraction of its explosive power. Everything which takes place, the movement of the stars, tellurian work, entropy, active and insatiable life itself, all this is only on the surface, while invisibly and incalculably there is gnawing beneath it that explosive force which is called matter. ”

“ Overwork exhausts, ruins, kills the body, just as the continued generation of the galvanic current exhausts the acid and wears out the zinc plate. The weakest point of the body has to bear the result of this violation of Nature's laws. ”

“ Friction, or resistance to tangential shifting of matter over matter, whatever the mode and arrangement, differs greatly according to the materials, but, like all material resistance, is essentially limited. ”

“ Stability, Stiffness and Strength.—A structure may be damaged or destroyed in three ways:—first, by displacement of its pieces from their proper positions relatively to each other or to the earth; secondly by disfigurement of one or more of those pieces, owing to their being unable to preserve their proper shapes under the pressures to which they are subjected; thirdly, by breaking of one or more of those pieces. The power of resisting displacement constitutes stability, the power of each piece to resist disfigurement is its stiffness; and its power to resist breaking, its strength. ”

“ For this atrocity, the earth instantly opened and swallowed him alive, while from the spot where the head had fallen gushed forth a fountain of unequalled force and purity, producing more than a hundred tons a minute. ”

“ So any structure, if its vibration rate is known, could easily be destroyed by a force applied to it in such a way that it should simply increase the swing of those vibrations up to the point of destruction. ”

“ To exist, that artificial matter must follow it through the steel—if not, it is destroyed. Then the steel is attempting to destroy the artificial matter. If the matter has sufficient energy, it will force the steel out of the way, and penetrate. The same is true of any other matter, lux metal or relux—it will penetrate. To continue in existence it must. And it has great energy, and will expend every erg of that energy of existence to continue existence. ”

“ The weaker field is crushed to atoms, with an awful noise; sometimes the destruction is mutual; pieces of huge dimensions, are not unfrequently piled to the height of twenty or thirty feet upon the top, whilst, doubtless, a proportionate quantity is depressed beneath. ”

“ The bearing of all this upon the machines is not immediately apparent, but will become so presently. In the meantime I must deal with friends who tell me that, though the future is fixed as regards inorganic matter, and in some respects with regard to man, yet that there are many ways in which it cannot be considered as fixed. Thus, they say that fire applied to dry shavings, and well fed with oxygen gas, will always produce a blaze, but that a coward brought into contact with a terrifying object will not always result in a man running away. ”

“ And force we are taught is indestructible; therefore motion must be indestructible also. But when a falling body strikes the earth, or a gunshot strikes its target, or a hammer delivers a blow upon an anvil, or a brake is pressed against a rotating wheel, motion is arrested, and it would seem natural to infer that it is destroyed. ”

“ The idea of annihilation either of matter or of force is inadmissible to science; but there is a constant shifting—a disappearing and reappearing—of different modes of energy, corresponding to the unceasing mutations of matter ”

“ In our case we are constantly in contact with the earth, and the charges would equalize."
"Please bear in mind, Jim, that we are not talking about electricity as now handled by man, but about some form of it as yet hypothetical. We don't know what kind of insulation it would require. We may be constitutionally insulated."
"And you think the fire-ball broke down that insulation by the shock to Tristan's system?" I asked. The logic of the thing was shaping up hazily, but unmistakably. "But, then, why don't we frequently see people kiting off the earth as the result of explosions?" ”