Segment (anatomy)

“ If we deal with one dimension only, the figure 1, that of a segment of a straight line, is cut out of and separated from the rest of an imaginary infinitely long straight line by the two points at its extremities. ”

“ THE MOVEMENT OF THE TRIANGLE The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area. ”

“ The segments are fitted together by a complex imbrication, which admits of great mobility and distension, while offering a remarkable power of resistance to external pressure: each segment is inserted far forward in the interior of that preceding it, and each also consists of separate upper and lower plates that much overlap where they meet at the sides (see Fig. 103) . The body is always terminated by a pair of horny, pincer-like {204}processes, which are differently shaped according to the sex of the individual. ”

“ Thus we can imagine a plane world, in which all the variety of motion is the phenomenon of structures consisting of filamentary atoms traversed by a plane of consciousness. Passing to four dimensions and our space, we can conceive that all things and movements in our world are the reading off of a permanent reality by a space of consciousness. Each atom at every moment is not what it was, but a new part of that endless line which is itself. ”

“ Also on the earth, as is well known, there is a directing of all things towards a common center; but there is this difference between this directing in the world and that in heaven, that in heaven the front parts are turned to the common center, but in the world the lower parts of the body. In the world this directing is called centripetal force, also gravitation. The interiors of angels are actually turned forwards; and since interiors manifest themselves in the face it is the face that determines the quarters. [2] ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence we conclude in general, that when an object is placed at any distance before two mirrors inclined at an angle, which is an even aliquot part of 360°, the symmetry of the picture is perfect, when the eye, considered as a mathematical point, is placed at E, and that the deviation from symmetry increases as the eye recedes from E towards ε. ”

“ The straight line is felt, to put the matter briefly, as symmetrical to itself, which is the case also with the plane. Curved lines are felt as deviations from straight lines, that is, as deviations from symmetry. [22] The presence of a sense for symmetry in people possessing only one eye from birth, is indeed a riddle. Of course, the sense of symmetry, although primarily acquired by means of the eyes, cannot be wholly limited to the visual organs. It must also be deeply rooted in other parts of the organism by ages of practice and can thus not be eliminated forthwith by the loss of one eye. ”

“ Thus the atom is through and through a self-contradiction, being itself only a part of a divided reality, yet at the same time itself real only because indivisible; and a science harbouring such an atom can hardly be said to be unmixedly physical. The vibration, too, already referred to here as motion in poise or at rest; infinity as one more quantity that is significant because not quantitative; the sensation, a component element of consciousness that cannot possibly be composite ”

“ In animals like sea-anemones and jellyfishes the general symmetry of the body is radial; that is to say, there is no right or left, and the body might be halved along many planes. It is a kind of symmetry well suited for sedentary or for drifting life. ”

“ OTHER ALLIED PHENOMENA In the mirror image of a solid we have a representation of what would result from a four-dimensional revolution, the surface of the mirror being the plane about which the movement takes place. If such a change of position were effected in the constituent parts of a body as a mirror image of it represents, the body would have undergone a revolution in the fourth dimension. ”

“ The rays of light are straight lines. The angles of incidence and reflexion are in the same plane and equal. The angles of incidence and refraction are in the same plane, and their sines bear an invariable ratio to one another for the same medium. ”

“ It is certain, in fact, that when we wish to consider separately a certain portion of indefinite space, conceived as gaseous, we mentally solidify its exterior envelope, so that a line and a surface are habitually, to our minds, just as solid as a volume. ”

“ Every description in space of the scene of an event or of the position of a body consists in designating a point or points on a rigid body imagined for the purpose, which coincides with the spot at which the event takes place or the object is situated. We ordinarily choose as our rigid body a portion of the earth or a set of axes attached to it. ”

“ Thus, has the medium of space access to every atom, and by the pressure from without, is enabled to act centrifugally within the body, as a kind of back-spring against each and the whole of its constituent atoms, to produce expansion, dissolution, and elementary dispersion according to the medium or circumstances in which the body may be placed. ”

“ If there be such Analogy in Nature furnishing an echo and an image in every department of Being of all that exists in every other department of Being, certainly that Analogy must be most distinct and clearly discoverable as between the Elements, or the lowest and simplest Constituents of Being in each Sphere. ”

“ Now, unless there were a void space separating the molecules, where can these go to when squeezed ? Most men [4] will find a difficulty in conceiving that space absolutely full of matter, soft or hard, can be made to hold more but the same space does hold sometimes more and sometimes less gross matter, so that in the latter case it cannot be quite full, or, in other words, the body it contains is composed in part of empty pores. ”

“ The Sphere would willingly have continued his lessons by indoctrinating me in the conformation of all regular Solids. Cylinders, Cones, Pyramids, Pentahedrons, Hexahedrons, Dodecahedrons, and Spheres: but I ventured to interrupt him. Not that I was wearied of knowledge. On the contrary, I thirsted for yet deeper and fuller draughts than he was offering to me.
“Pardon me,” said I, “O Thou Whom I must no longer address as the Perfection of all Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant a sight of thine interior.”
Sphere. My what?
I. Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines. ”

“ Indeed, when the range of seeing puts the size of an atom at less than one two-hundred-and-twenty-four-thousandth of an inch, and when the range of thinking puts it at less than one six-millionth of an inch, many prefer to consider an atom as a center of force and not as a material entity at all. ”

“ The tendency of the dark mass is to hold the eye at its center. The problem is to find the balance-center between the motion and the mass. I have done this, and the balance-center is indicated by the symmetrical outline of the diagram.
180. Some shapes hold the eye with peculiar force, and in such cases the [Pg 179] attractions of tone or measure or shape on the other side have to be increased if we are to have a balance. ”

“ If we consider the space surrounding an infinite straight line we shall see that it is a cyclic space, because it returns into itself. If we now conceive a plane, or any other surface, commencing at the straight line and extending on one side of it to infinity, this surface may be regarded as a diaphragm which reduces the cyclic space to an acyclic one. ”

“ If one of the crystalline plates be turned round in its own plane, without alteration of the angle of incidence, the peculiar reflection vanishes twice in a revolution, viz., when the plane of incidence coincides with the plane of symmetry of the crystal. ”

“ For nothing was visible—nothing, that is, save the released energies which, leaping through level after level, reached at last even to the visible spectrum. Yet forces of such unthinkable magnitude were warring there that space itself was being deformed visibly, moment by moment. ”

“ Every separate duality, again, being sustained by a counter-duality, every performance is sustained by four different factors.
When an act is of a material nature and belongs to the hemisphere of the abdomen, it is sustained by four counter-factors belonging to the thorax. When it is of an immaterial nature and belongs to the hemisphere of the thorax, it is sustained by four counter-factors having their seat in the abdomen. Thus every act or action consists of eight movements, or an octave of movements. ”

“ If we think of the intersection of these with the rising surface, as the atoms, or physical units, of a plane universe, we shall have a world of apparent motion, with bodies moving harmoniously amongst one another, each a cross-section of some part of an unchanging and unmoving three-dimensional entity. ”

“ Spencer, defining extension as an 'aggregate of relations of coexistent position,' says "every cognition of magnitude is a cognition of relations of position," [281] and "no idea of extension can arise from the simultaneous excitation" of many nerves "unless there is a knowledge of their relative positions." [282] Just so Prof. Bain insists that the very meaning of space is scope for movement, [283] and that therefore distance and magnitude can be no original attributes of the eye's sensibility. ”

“ Thus for the last hundred years the idea of the structure of the universe, or the luminiferous ether, which has prevailed, is that of space occupied by an incompressible elastic jelly yielding to tangential stress, having a density which is all but indefinitely small. ”

“ If the stars are fixed in the crystal sphere like nails, they must be carried round complete circles by the revolution of the sphere about a diameter.14 Yet Anaximenes also said that the stars do not move or revolve under the earth as some suppose, but round the earth, just as a cap can be turned round on the head. ”

“ The whole astronomic order resolves itself into attraction and repulsion—a centripetal and a centrifugal force; the chemical order into the antinomy of positive and negative electricity, decomposing substances and recomposing them. The whole visible universe presents the antinomy of light and darkness, movement and repose, force and matter, heat and cold, the one and the multiple. ”

“ But when the Rays pass through the Prism to the Eye, the [Pg 238] Orbits of the several Colours in every Ring are refracted, some more than others, according to their degrees of Refrangibility: By which means the Colours on one side of the Ring (that is in the circumference on one side of its center) , become more unfolded and dilated, and those on the other side more complicated and contracted. ”

“ A reductio ad absurdum, no doubt; but it only holds good on the supposition that you can draw Lines through P, so as to lie within that angle. But this supposition requires a finite angle. If we suppose that, the moment one ray begins to revolve so as to bring its head nearer to the given line, it instantly coincides with the other ray, head with tail and tail with head, it will not then be possible to draw any such Line as you suggest: and then where is your reductio ad absurdum? ”

“ For the semidiameters of circles, inasmuch as circles are understood to be made up of the aggregate of them, are so many sectors; and therefore in the description of a spiral, the sector which describes it is diminished in duplicate proportions to the diminutions of the circumference of the circle in which it is inscribed; so that the complement of the spiral, that is, that space in the circle which is without the spiral line, is double to the space within the spiral line. ”

“ The image of the object comprehended in each of the incomplete sectors must therefore be greater or less than the images in half a sector; that is, when the last sector β O α, Fig. 2, is greater than A O B, the part q v in one half must be the image of more than o z, and v p the image of more than t y, and vice versa, when β O α is less than A O B. Hence it follows that the symmetry is imperfect from the image in the last sector being greater or less than the other images. ”

“ The eye moves through a series of angles toward the angle which contains the greatest number of attractions. The reader can hardly fail to feel the successive axes of symmetry as a retarding element in this Rhythm.
46. Sixth. Symmetrical relations of position may be repeated in progressions of scale and of intervals. In that case we get two movements, one caused by a gradual increase in the number of attractions in successive angles of vision, the other being due to a gradual crowding together and convergence of attractions in the same series of angles. ”

“ The centre between the eye-brows is connected with sight in yet another way. It is through it that the power of magnification of minute physical objects is exercised. A tiny flexible tube of etheric matter is projected from the centre of it, resembling a microscopic snake with an eye at the end of it. ”

“ I. And has this Creature sides, as well as angles or what you call "terminal Points?"
Sphere. Of course; and all according to Analogy. But, by the way, not what you call sides, but what we call sides. You would call them solids.
I. And how many solids or sides will appertain to this Being whom I am to generate by the motion of my inside in an "upward" direction, and whom you call a Cube?
Sphere. How can you ask? And you a mathematician! The side of anything is always, if I may so say, one Dimension behind the thing. Consequently, as there is no Dimension behind a Point, a Point has 0 sides ”