Unmoved mover

“ But on the other hand it is equally clear that the displacement of the occupant of the new position is a prior condition of the possibility of the movement of {35} the mover, for nothing can move unless there is an unoccupied place for it to move into, and there is no unoccupied place unless it has been vacated by its occupant before the movement begins. We have therefore the clear contradiction that a thing can only move when something else which it causes to move has already moved. ”

“ Indeed if the mover is the principle of the movement alone, when the movement ceases, the action of the mover ceases as regards the thing moved, since it has already reached the term of movement, even as a house, after it is built, ceases being built by the builder. ”

“ The main thing is that all the work has been done for you. All the worry has been borne by someone else. It only remains for you to accustom yourself to your new surroundings.
In the same way at the other end of the social scale, moving is equally a matter calling for little thought and less trouble. The mover puts his tooth-brush and his comb in his vest-pocket; he throws his other pair of trousers into his bag along with his other shirt and the pair of shoes he had half-soled; and then he slips quietly away while his landlady is not looking. ”

“ The motion was seasonable, and so immediately seconded by the man of medicine, that the mover and the man to be moved soon found themselves in a situation equally well adapted to the compassionate object of the one, and the seasonable relief of the other. ”

“ And since every moved mover is an instrument, it follows that the power of the first mover in a particular genus when drawn out through many mediate movers fails at length, and reaches something that is moved and not a mover. ”

“ In fact we must believe that the effect of our movement—namely, the displacement of the previous occupants from the positions we occupy in moving—happened before it was caused. Now it is impossible for us to believe either of the only two alternatives—either that we do not really move but only {36} appear to do so, or that the displacement our movement causes really precedes the movement. ”

“ He opined that bodies at rest stay at rest and bodies in motion stay in uniform motion, unless and until acted upon by some force. So motion need not be explained by the continuing force of a prime mover. ”

“ Their movement must have been due either to constraint or to their nature. And if their movement was natural, a moment's consideration shows that there was already an ordered world. For the prime mover must cause motion in virtue of its own natural movement, and the other bodies, moving without constraint, as they came to rest in their proper places, would fall into the order in which they now stand, the heavy bodies moving towards the centre and the light bodies away from it. ”

“ But both mechanism and finalism would leave on one side the movement, which is reality itself. In one sense, the movement is more than the positions and than their order; for it is sufficient to make it in its indivisible simplicity to secure that the infinity of the successive positions as also their order be given at once—with something else which is neither order nor position but which is essential, the mobility. ”

“ Exquisite motion! more maddening than the smooth floating stride of the race-horse, or the crash of the thorn-hedges before the stalwart hunter, or the swaying of the fir-boughs in the gale, when we used to climb as schoolboys after the lofty hawk’s nest; but not so maddening as the new motion of our age—the rush of the express-train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the long chalk cutting; and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky and vanish ”

“ And so when the sense of our own movement becomes indistinct, as in a railway carriage, we naturally drift into the illusion that objects, such as trees, telegraph posts, and so on, are moving, when they are perfectly still. ”

“ But from the mobility of the movement we turn away as much as we can; what interests us is, as we said above, the unmovable plan of the movement rather than the movement itself. Is it a simple movement? We ask ourselves where it is going. It is by its direction, that is to say, by the position of its provisional end, that we represent it at every moment. ”

“ And in Book viii. we have such propositions as this (c. 10) : “Demonstration that a finite mover (movens) cannot move anything in an infinite time.” This is illustrated by a diagram in which two hands are represented as engaged in moving a whole sphere, and one hand in moving a hemisphere.
This mode of representing force, in diagrams illustrative of mechanical reasonings, by human hands pushing, pulling, and the like, is still employed in elementary books. Probably this is the first example of such a mode of representation.
Roger Bacon. ”

“ In the deep sleep that had come upon the crawler, arms and legs kept raising in a deliberate, dreadful climbing motion. It was as though they had a life of their own—they kept their movement independently of the motionless body. ”

“ MOBILITY AS THE PULSE OF THE COMMUNITY Movement, per se, is not an evidence of change or of growth. In fact, movement may be a fixed and unchanging order of motion, designed to control a constant situation, as in routine movement. Movement that is significant for growth implies a change of movement in response to a new stimulus or situation. Change of movement of this type is called mobility. Movement of the nature of routine finds its typical expression in work. Change of movement, or mobility, is characteristically expressed in adventure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The world moves by. Houses and men are on the wing, landscape and animals are in flight, yet all this motion in the external world is an illusion which I soon learn to correct. I and my railway coach are the moving bodies. Every time I look out of the window I correctly interpret the motion in this manner. ”

“ For every movement of any body whatever, either results from a form, as the movements of things heavy and light result from the form which they have from their generating cause, for which reason the generator is called the mover; or else tends to a form, as heating tends to the form of heat. Now it belongs to the same cause, to imprint a form, to dispose to that form, and to give the movement which results from that form; for fire not only generates fire, but it also heats and moves things upwards. ”

“ Movement, rapid movement of some kind, a ride, the hasty survey of a shelf of books, best of all a conversation like this morning's with a visitor for the first time,—amid the felicitous chances of that, at some random turn by the way, he would become aware of shaping purpose: the beam of light or heat would strike down, to illuminate, to fuse and organise the coldly accumulated matter, of reason, of experience. ”

“ These two diverse tendencies at work eternally in the same world produce strain and tension and anguish. The tension occasioned by these opposite forces gives rise to the third "quality," which is a tendency toward movement, oscillation, rotation—what Boehme often calls the wheel of nature, or the wheel of motion, or the wheel of life. ”

“ The conditions of agreeable sequence of movement seem to be the combination of the refreshing and stimulating element of change with an element of smoothness or ease of transition. Change of movement is, of course, necessitated by the universal condition of mental life, and variety is the very essence of all æsthetic experience, all monotonous feeling being wearisome. On the other hand, a chain of varied movements may be smooth and agreeable, or jerky and harsh, and this difference is related to the innate mechanical conditions of movement, and to the effects of habit. ”

“ Movement was the keynote of the picture—stealthy, not-yet-quite-confident pack-movement on the one hand, concentrated here and there in blood-red eddies, and, on the other hand, swift, desperate marches in the open. ”

“ Soon the swift motion lulls our brains into the accustomed muddle; we seem to be dragged along like a miserable thread pulled through the eye of an ever-lasting needle,—through and through, and never through,—while here and there, like painful knots, the dépôts stop us, the poor thread is arrested for a minute, and then the pulling begins again. ”

“ He that is carried forward, however swiftly, by a motion equable and easy, perceives not the change of place but by the variation of objects. If the wheel of life, which rolls thus silently along, passed on through undistinguishable uniformity, we should never mark its approaches to the end of the course. ”

“ I call it locomotion rather than movement, because we have direct experience only of our own movements, and infer similar movement in other beings and objects because of their change of place either across our motionless eye or across some other object whose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged. ”

“ When we passed Long Branch the motion was a steady rock from side to side, that made one feel like a baby in a cradle, and before bedtime it was a violent swing that flung one about like a toy, and tossed the furniture around like doll-house belongings. ”

“ The Cosmological Form.—The actual is ever antecedent to the potential not only in conception (for I can speak of potentiality only in reference to some activity) but also in time, for the acting becomes actual only through an acting; the uneducated becomes educated through the educated, and this leads to the claim of a first mover which shall be pure activity. Or, again, it is only possible that there should be motion, becoming, or a chain of causes, except as a principle of motion, a mover exists. ”

“ But the moving body, ever tending to fall, needs constant support, if it is to move in a true horizontal line. ‘What, then,’ he asked himself, ‘will give constant support to a moving body?’ And his answer was ‘Human legs!’ That was the discovery that immortalised his name! ”

“ But I need change and must move again." Whatever else that incessant, senseless movement may mean, it is certainly not the sign of a man whose work absorbs him, whose nature is crystallizing along its proper lines. ”

“ You still see motion—all the wheels moving in regular order; but the cause of the motion, the power that moves, is yet unseen. You perceive a chain wound around a wheel, and attached to another wheel, around which it is slowly winding itself; and this chain appears to regulate the whole movement. You conclude that the power must be in this last-named wheel. ”

“ But when all the problems of mechanical locomotion have been solved, there will be no further use for our physical and mental restlessness, with its nomad instinct; and our science of motion and locomotion having been learned and adopted by the round-headed Turanian races, ours may be destined to die out or become absorbed in theirs, our rôle on earth being accomplished. ”

“ The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel. ”

“ When there is in nature no fixed condition, how much less must there be in the life of a people, beings endowed with mobility and movement! ”

“ Perpetual Motion as used in this book means what it is usually understood to mean—Self-Motive Power—a machine that furnishes the power to keep its parts going as a machine. In this sense Perpetual Motion has always engaged the minds of many, many people—and what is more natural? ”

“ Meanwhile the climbing and leaping from branch to branch, the measuring with the eye of distances and strength of branches, the power of grasping the right point at the right instant, and all the complicated series of movements combined in this form of locomotion furnished a marvellous set of exercises not only for the muscles but for the higher centres in the cortex of the brain. ”

“ Aware only of its unimpeded movement, and not at all of the impelling start, this would of course imagine itself self-moving and free. But those who see whence that unhindered movement really comes, know better. ”

“ Yes, Yes, all this is real actuallity but not to us, not to us chained—and just and simple because we, being chained, have not the freedom to use our natural faculty of locomotion to carry us from our cells to the open orizon—under the Sun at daytime—under the visible stars, at night. ”

“ What is meant by the term "Perpetual Motion?" Is it supposed that there is an undiscovered substance in the world, that will of itself perpetually move, with as little apparent cause as that which actuates the needle in becoming motionless in one particular position? ”

“ Every movement seemed to be natural, thoroughly unaffected and effortless. Sometimes only the arms were moved, sometimes only the legs, and sometimes a scarcely perceptible motion of a hand or a foot sufficed to give the needful impulse. ”

“ The physiological explanation, that the mechanism of locomotion, as of habitual movements, grows to the mode in which it is early exercised, and that it then works automatically under the general control and direction of the will, can scarcely be put down by any assumption of an hypothetical necessity, which rests only on the basis of ignorance of one side of our composite nature. ”

“ Conversely, nothing is more dismal than to see set in permanent rigidness a thing whose aspect is linked for us with the idea of great mobility. Even the blithest of us and least easily depressed would make a long detour to avoid a stuffed squirrel or a case of pinned butterflies. And you can well imagine with what a sinking of the heart I beheld, this morning, on a road near the coast of Norfolk, a railway-car without wheels. ”