Rigidity

“ What but experience can possibly inform us that a force applied transversely to a lever will have any tendency to turn the lever on its center? This cannot be, except we suppose in the lever tenacity, rigidity and the like, which are qualities known only by experience. ”

“ Since rigidity is a relative term, the characterization of the structure as rigid must be taken as emphasizing rigidity rather than its opposite, flexibility, with special reference to the conditions to be encountered in the operation of the piston. ”

“ Thus in the province of the mechanical, properly so called, the laws of gravitation, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity, and elasticity prevail, which in themselves (apart from my explanation of all natural forces as lower grades of the objectification of will) exist as manifestations of forces which cannot be further explained, but themselves constitute the principles of all further explanation, which merely consists in reduction to them. ”

“ Probably the chief cause of devotion to rigidity of method is, however, that it seems to promise speedy, accurately measurable, correct results. The zeal for "answers" is the explanation of much of the zeal for rigid and mechanical methods. ”

“ Something tells us that all this is provisional; that the weakened reasons will wax strong again, and the stronger weaken; that equilibrium is unreached; that testing our reasons, not obeying them, is still the order of the day, and that we must wait awhile, patient or impatiently, until our mind is made up 'for good and all.' This inclining, first to one then to another future, both of which we represent as possible, resembles the oscillations to and fro of a material body within the limits of its elasticity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the structure has yielded, the same inertia becomes a condition of its comparative permanence in the new form, and of the new habits the body then manifests. Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. ”

“ If you turn the heads of the trees to your right, they are wrong, because gravity would have bent them more downwards; if to your left, wrong, because the law of resilience would have raised them more at the extremities. ”

“ The balance is a horizontal affair.
B. Center a more reposing division. Chief attention to division point, with side excursions to right and left, when refreshment of perception is needed. The balance is horizontal and not vertical.
C. A balance with variety, or without symmetry. Centers at division point and wants sweep over long part. More concentration on short part. Subjective activity there—an introduction of energy. A contraction of the muscles used in active attention. Long side easier, takes care of itself, self-poised. Line centers at division point. Active with short division. ”

“ A mental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and then the centre of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structure remains permanent. ”

“ So far as ‘thoughts’ and ‘feelings’ can be active, their activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of the rest of the world. [Cf. also A Pluralistic Universe, p. 344, note 8. Ed.] The body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that experience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its point of view. ”

“ The objects of Touch always present themselves as pressing upon, or as resisting the particular part of the body which perceives them, or by which we perceive them. When I lay my hand upon the table, the table presses upon my hand, or resists the further motion of my hand, in the same manner as my hand presses upon the table. But pressure or resistance necessarily supposes externality in the thing which presses or resists. ”

“ There is nothing daring or sensational in its construction. Stress and thrust answer each other directly, simply, massively. The stately calm of such a structure might easily become dull and monotonous were it not for the delicate sense of proportion governing the relations of the parts, for the introduction of slight deviations from strict rectangularity and symmetry,181 and for the beautiful decoration in form and colour on frieze, pediment, and capital. ”

“ Neither touch, nor any other mere passive sensation, could produce the perception of extent, as we have already urged: nor could the muscular sense lead to such a perception, except the extension of the muscles were felt to be resisted. And thus the perception of resistance enters the mind along with the perception of extended bodies. All the objects with which we have to do are not only extended but solid. ”

“ When we detach the feeling of resistance, we, of course, detach those of hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, which are but different modifications of resistance. And when these, and the feelings of extension and figure, are detached, a very simple sensation seems to remain, the feeling which we have when something, without being seen, comes gently in contact with our skin, in such a way, that we cannot say whether it is hard or soft, rough or smooth, of what figure it is, or of what size. ”

“ That the Nature of extension or dilation strives or endeavours to get space, ground, or compass, I mean those corporeal motions endeavour to make place and space by their extensions, that is, to spread their parts of matter into a larger compass or body. And when I say, That Contractions endeavour to cast or thrust out space, place, ground, or compass, My meaning is, That those corporeal motions endeavour to draw their parts of matter into a more close and solid body, for there is no place nor space without body. ”

“ As world is balanced against world in the [Pg 408] universe, so in the human fabric, in the vegetable structure, in the crystallized gem, or in the rude rock, force is weighed against force, and the balance hangs in tranquillity. ”

“ If any man should say, that hardness in bodies is a certain vibration of their parts, or that it is certain effluvia emitted by them which affect our touch in the manner we feel: such hypothesis would shock common sense; because we all know, that if the parts of a body adhere strongly, it is hard, although it should neither emit effluvia, nor vibrate. ”

“ Now 'tis certain, that the tendency of bodies, continually operating upon our senses, must produce, from custom, a like tendency in the fancy; and that when we consider any object situated in an ascent, the idea of its weight gives us a propensity to transport it from the place in which it is situated to the place immediately below it, and so on till we come to the ground, which equally stops the body and our imagination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But that all Motion comes by joining or pressing of other parts, I deny, for if sensitive and rational perceptions, which are sensitive and rational motions, in the body, and in the mind, were made by the pressure of outward objects, pressing the sensitive organs, and so the brain or interior parts of the Body, they would cause such dents and holes therein, as to make them sore and patched in a short time ”

“ These are curves of extreme tension, as of substances pulled out lengthwise with force that has found its utmost resistance, lines of strain, long cool curves of vital springing, that bear the strength of their intrinsic unity in their rhythms. ”

“ So we lie down or rise at will, the solid earth abetting. But supposing the parts reversed, ourselves the willingly quiescent, the earth the one to rise or fall? Would not our brain, devised on the opposite principle, be naturally upset, carrying with it the stomach, its most intimate relation? ”

“ But that body whose nature it is to revolve in a circle, cannot possibly have either heaviness or levity; for it cannot move in a right line, either upwards or downwards, nor either by nature or against nature. ”

“ It is only by a visual fiction that we come to regard our active selves as distinct from the dynamic system. We cannot, in fact, shake off the bonds of corporeality, of gravity, of all the various restraints of our organic activity.
Relatively, however, the cerebral activity of Thought is liberated from the stresses of the dynamic environment ”

“ At every step you stumble and injure yourself—rocks, rugged stones, sharp points, peaks, angles, and little corners and big corners. The world should be round—quite so, and round it is; roundness is perfection; but it should be an immeasurable sphere of eider-down, so that, if a citizen falls, he may always fall amid softness—thus! (Letting himself fall in the arm-chair, or on one of the cushioned stools at the side of the table.) ”

“ By muscular contraction he can create a pressure on an outward object, which, if sufficiently powerful, will set it in motion, or if it be already moving, will check or modify or altogether arrest its motion, and he can do no more. ”

“ The plasticity of the living material of our nervous system is, to put it briefly, the reason why we do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, we do it half mechanically, or almost without any consciousness. ”

“ A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man ”

“ Judgments of energy and work are primarily derived from muscular sensation or the sense of stress and strain. There is consciousness of stress when other bodies press upon us, and a consciousness of strain when our bodies press upon others. The consciousness is but a consciousness of change in self, but there is always an inference in a judgment. ”

“ In action grown habitual, what instigates each new muscular contraction to take place in its appointed order is not a thought or a perception, but the sensation occasioned by the muscular contraction just finished. A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition, throughout its whole course. In an habitual action, mere sensation is a sufficient guide, and the upper regions of brain and mind are set comparatively free. ”

“ But our sole object meanwhile, as I have said more than once, is to demonstrate, by such illustrations as these, that, whatever be the actual and as yet unknown modus operandi, there are physical conditions and distributions of force which could produce just such phenomena of movement as we see taking place within the living cell. ”

“ But in the former, what strikes us most is the concentration of the mass with the retention of but little internal mobility; in the latter, what strikes us most is the wonderful complication of the transformations wrought by the immense amount of internal mobility retained. These transformations are to us the mark, the distinguishing feature, of life. ”

“ The centres of disturbance, which positively exceed the mean consistency in virtue of the pyknosis or condensation, form the ponderable matter of bodies; the finer, intermediate substance, which occupies the space between them, and negatively falls below the mean consistency, forms the ether, or imponderable matter. ”

“ Of things that move, some have the cause of their motion within themselves; others, again, are moved only from without. Now only portable things are moved from without, such as pieces of wood, and stones, and all matter that is held together by their constitution alone. ”

“ For, in enumerating them, we run through the full circle of active forces; and when the race, the environment, and the moment have been considered—that is to say the inner mainspring, the pressure from without, and the impulsion already acquired—we have exhausted not only all real causes but again all possible causes of movement. ”

“ The subjects wish 'to take in the whole field,' they wish 'not to be disturbed by too large a black space in the center'; and when, in order to cover in some way the whole space, the small line is drawn in or the large one pushed out, they have, nevertheless, a feeling of equilibrium in spite of the reversal of mechanical balance. ”

“ This perpetual chain of causes and effects, whose first link is rivetted to the throne of God, divides itself into innumerable diverging branches, which, like the nerves arising from the brain, permeate the most minute and most remote extremities of the system, diffusing motion and sensation to the whole. ”

“ You always, in contemplating objects, especially systems of lines and shapes, experience bodily tensions and impulses relative to the forms which you apprehend, the rising and sinking, rushing, colliding, reciprocal checking, etc. ”