University Of Cambridge Alumni

"The Napoleonic war (1803–15) that followed the brief interval of the Peace of Amiens, was for us a war waged in self-defence, to prevent the systematic subordination of Europe to a vigorous military despotism sworn to our destruction. A few months at the Foreign Office in 1806 and an attempt to treat with our adversary for peace, made this clear even to Fox, who had been till then singularly blind to the real character of Bonaparte. But the Whigs were only enthusiastic for the war by fits and starts. The honour of beating Napoleon fell as clearly to the Tories, as the honour of beating Louis XIV had fallen to the Whigs."

"The persistence of the Foxite tradition in one section of the governing class made it possible for Grey, at the end of his long career, to constitute a party in the unreformed Parliament, large enough when backed from outside by the middle and lower classes, to pass the Bill that abolished the rotten boroughs. Nothing else could have ultimately averted civil war. It was certainly inevitable, and it may have been desirable, that a great Conservative reaction should emphasise our rejection of the French doctrines. But if the whole of the privileged class had joined Pitt's anti-Jacobin bloc and had been brought up in the neo-Tory tradition, the constitution could not have been altered by legal means, and change could only have come in nineteenth-century Britain along the same violent and bloodstained path by which it has come in continental countries."

"A subject of Frederick the Great of Prussia, who had strayed into the middle of a Westminster election in 1782, thus describes what he saw and felt there... It is true that if the good man had witnessed an election at an average English borough, or had ascertained that Manchester and Birmingham were unrepresented, he might have felt less enraptured. Nevertheless, he had seen something great, which had then no parallel in France, Spain, Italy or in his own country, something which, for all its absurdities, was of the heart of England."

"A British officer in Flanders in 1918, transplanted to a British messroom in the same country in 1793, would be more at home than in a foreign messroom of to-day. Though he would find the drinking too heavy for him, he would be surrounded by presumptions indefinably familiar. He would be critical of much, but he would understand from inside what he was criticising. Most of us would be at home taking tea at Dr. Johnson's, hearing the contact of civilised man with society discussed with British commonsense and good nature, with British idiosyncrasy and prejudice. Only we should be aware that we had stepped back out of a scientific, romantic and mobile era into an era literary, classical and static."

"I am sure I am as little of a Jacobite as anybody but I sincerely hope that the statue of James II will not be moved, because it is a fine work of art. If once we begin moving statues for political or historical reasons there will be no end to controversy."

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."

"I read with regret that the authorities intend to remove the statue of Gordon from Trafalgar Square and send it down to Sandhurst. I hope the decision is not irrevocable. His memory is not specially suited to inspire young officers with zeal for discipline and obedience to orders. On the other hand, he is a true national hero; his strange and tragic story is deeply written across our political and imperial annals; his personality and genius were unique, and will always remain a source of pride to Englishmen."

"The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 was indeed the one large measure of reform that became law between the French Revolution and Castlereagh's death in 1822. It is greatly to the credit of our ancestors that England, in her death-grip with Napoleon, should have given time and thought to do justice to the negro. It was a fine use to make of the sea power that Nelson bequeathed us for the duration of the war. And, at the return of peace, the world-wide influence that Trafalgar and Waterloo gave to England's representatives was used by Castlereagh and Wellington, in consultation with Wilberforce, to further the suppression of slave trading under every flag."

"Linguistic ignorance and racial isolation are our greatest national dangers in the new era opened out by the War. We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them. Foreign policy is merely an outcome of our other international relations, and can only give official expression to our national ignorance or our national understanding of other races. The League of Nations is not a substitute for mutual understanding; rather it assumes that such understanding exists, and if that cannot soon be brought into existence, the League will fail, and with it the hopes of mankind."

"In our own day classics have been dethroned without being replaced. But throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries our statesmen were so brought up that they thought of Rome as the hearth of their political civilization, where their predecessor Cicero had denounced Catiline; where the models of their own eloquence and statecraft, as taught them at Eton, Harrow and Winchester, had been practised and brought to perfection. And, therefore, the ruins of the Forum were as familiar, as sacred, and as moving to Russell and to Gladstone as to Mazzini and Garibaldi themselves. This was a prime fact in the history of the Risorgimento."

"It is perhaps in the sphere of political institutions that the English have been most original in their native invention, from the time of Magna Charta downwards, or even from the time of William the Conqueror. Certainly it is in politics that the world at large has borrowed most from us; for our literature, though as great as the Greek or Latin, has had relatively little influence outside the English-speaking nations. In politics modern Italy, under Cavour, went to school in England, borrowing thence her constitutional monarchy and parliament. Yet even in the realm of political ideas, where we have taught more than we learned, how much we owed to Ancient Rome! The Conservative idea of respect for law and of the sovereign regal power was throughout our history sanctioned by the glamour of classical association hanging round the words Lex, Rex, Imperator. Our Plantagenet and our Tudor foundations were built on the Roman model. And no less in the realm of Liberal thought, the ideal of Roman Republican virtue, perpetuated in Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus, did as much to inspire Milton, Sidney, and the opponents of the Stuarts as the Old Testament itself."

"The occupation of Tripoli appears to rest on the same basis as the occupation of other parts of North Africa by other European Powers—viz., on the law of force. Some of us wish, for the sake of our friends the Italians, that the Italian State had continued to rest on the stronger, nobler, and more economical basis of a free national union of a single race. But the Italians may know their own affairs best, and in any case we are in no position to scold them for imitating ourselves."

"The discredit to the good name of England if she drifts, however unintentionally, into a partition of the Persian State with the Russian Government, and the consequent setback to the moral element in our foreign policy, cannot lightly be faced."

"Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge."

"That England and Italy should be on friendly terms is essential for the peace of the Mediterranean and of Africa. It is also essential for the peace of Europe, and therefore, in all probability, for the prosperity and independence of both countries. An ideological war between the great Powers of Europe would destroy all that is left of good in our civilization. Italy and England can cooperate to avert that catastrophe. Such cooperation involves no disloyalty on Italy's part to her German partner, nor on ours to France. There is a common European interest—peace. I feel deeply grateful to Mr. Chamberlain for his cheerful courage in taking a definite step towards reconciliation, in face of great difficulties in the path."

"Dictatorship and democracy must live side by side in peace, or civilization is doomed. For this end I believe Englishmen would do well to remember that the Nazi form of government is in large measure the outcome of Allied and British injustice at Versailles in 1919."

"As regards "predominance in Europe," whether "Germany wished" it or not, she would have got it, if she had once more overrun France. And she would have overrun France as well as Belgium if England had not intervened. Then there would have been an end of the independence of all Continental States in face of Germany, and in face of such a Europe British independence could not have been maintained. German predominance would have been just as fatal to us whether it had been intentionally or unintentionally acquired. Such at least was Grey's view, and it will always be the view of many Englishmen."

"Instead of a little power, occasionally exercised at the expense of great unpopularity, the Monarch, by retiring from politics, acquired an immense popularity outside, and retained important influence behind the scenes. The new popularity of the Monarch was proved at the Jubilees of Victoria and of George V. The new English Democracy is in love with the Crown. Radicalism, founded by Tom Paine in the days of George III, had had strong Republican tendencies, but they had withered away as the Crown retired from politics. The modern Labour Party has no quarrel with the English Monarchy. The symbolic importance of the Monarch has greatly increased even in our own day. The Crown is the one symbol that all classes and parties can without reservation accept."

"Opening the fridge door, I found a rat eating the cheese. My dealings with rodents, particularly those tagged verminous, have been few, but generally the pattern has been one of man, the boss, the caretaker of creation, the namer, appearing and the lower orders hitting the road."

"Methods Used 1. Marxist: You decide you're the vanguard of the proletariat and then you can do whatever you want because history will back you up. 2. Stoic: Stay very calm. 3. Positivist: Yes, I'm positive I want to rob this bank."

"The impossible lives next door to the possible; people ring its door bell by accident all the time."

"You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early."

"Best of things symbolised by Jocelyne's barbell: "It's a symbol of the need for symbols." "How life shrapnels us." "Assistant bank manageress on the outside, primitive on the inside." "Of whatever I feel like." "That you can do stupid things at any point in your life.""

"Jocelyne clicked her barbell on her teeth. I was watching her closely for signs of collapsing romance. Her tongue was pierced, (a process, she had elaborated, that had taken two weeks of painful healing) and it put me in mind of the tongue-piercing ceremony endured on October 28, 709 AD by the principal wife of Shield Jaguar, Blood Lord of Yaxchilan (Lintel 24); i.e. to my eye, pointless, but if it's good enough for the Mayans ..."

"The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth of one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe thing because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, "Peace," to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are."

"The models of Einstein and de Sitter are static solutions of Einstein's modified gravitational equations for a world-wide homogeneous system. They both involve a positive cosmological constant λ, determining the curvature of space. If this constant is zero, we obtain a third model in classical infinite Euclidean space. This model is empty, the space-time being that of Special Relativity. It has been shown that these are the only possible static world models based on Einstein's theory. In 1922, Friedmann... broke new ground by investigating non-static solutions to Einstein's field equations, in which the radius of curvature of space varies with time. This possibility had already been envisaged, in a general sense, by Clifford in the eighties."

"Students of Spinoza will easily trace the connection between his theory of mind and matter and the doctrine set forth in Clifford's essays on "Body and Mind," and "The Nature of Things-in themselves. … Briefly put, the conception is that mind is the one ultimate reality; not mind as we know it in the complex forms of conscious feeling and thought, but the simpler elements out of which thought and feeling are built up. The hypothetical ultimate element of mind, or atom of mind-stuff, precisely corresponds to the hypothetical atom of matter, being the ultimate fact of which the material atom is the phenomenon. Matter and the sensible universe are the relations between particular organisms, that is, mind organized into consciousness, and the rest of the world. This leads to results which would in a loose and popular sense be called materialist. But the theory must, as a metaphysical theory, be reckoned on the idealist side. To speak technically, it is an idealist monism. Indeed it is a very subtle form of idealism, and by no means easy of apprehension at first sight. Nevertheless there are distinct signs of a convergence towards it on the part of recent inquirers who have handled philosophical problems in a scientific spirit, and particularly those who have studied psychology on the physiological side. Perhaps we shall be told that this proves the doctrine to be materialism in disguise; but it is hardly worth while to dispute about names while more serious things remain for discussion. And the idea does require much more working out; involving, as it does, extensive restatement and rearrangement of metaphysical problems. It raises not only several questions, but preliminary (and really fundamental) problems as to what questions are reasonable."

"But even the distant reader must allow that Clifford's mental personality belonged to the highest possible type to say no more. The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal. And if in these modern days we are to look for any prophet or saviour who shall influence our feelings towards the universe as the founders and renewers of past religions have influenced the minds of our fathers, that prophet, if he ever come, must, like Clifford, be no mere sentimental worshipper of science, but an expert in her ways. And he must have what Clifford had in so extraordinary a degree—that lavishly generous confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the few but a cold riddle to the many."

"With the new views advocated by Riemann... the texture, structure or geometry of space is defined by the metrical field, itself produced by the distribution of matter. Any non-homogeneous distribution of matter would then entail a variable structure of geometry for space from place to place. ... Riemann's exceedingly speculative ideas on the subject of the metrical field were practically ignored in his day, save by the English mathematician Clifford, who translated Riemann's works, prefacing them to his own discovery of the non-Euclidean Clifford space. Clifford realised the potential importance of the new ideas and suggested that matter itself might be accounted for in terms of these local variations of the non-Euclidean space, thus inverting in a certain sense Riemann's ideas. But in Clifford's day this belief was mathematically untenable. Furthermore, the physical exploration of space seemed to yield unvarying Euclideanism. ...it was reserved for the theoretical investigator Einstein, by a stupendous effort of rational thought, based on a few flimsy empirical clues, to unravel the mystery and to lead Riemann's ideas to victory. (In all fairness to Einstein... he does not appear to have been influenced directly by Riemann.) Nor were Clifford's hopes disappointed, for the varying non-Euclideanism of the continuum was to reveal the mysterious secret of gravitation, and perhaps also of matter, motion, and electricity. ... Einstein had been led to recognize that space of itself was not fundamental. The fundamental continuum whose non-Euclideanism was fundamental was... one of Space-Time... possessing a four-dimensional metrical field governed by the matter distribution. Einstein accordingly applied Riemann's ideas to space-time instead of to space... He discovered that the moment we substitute space-time for space (and not otherwise), and assume that free bodies and rays of light follow geodesics no longer in space but in space-time, the long-sought-for local variations in geometry become apparent. They are all around us, in our immediate vicinity... We had called their effects gravitational effects... never suspecting that they were the result of those very local variations in the geometry for which our search had been in vain....the theory of relativity is the theory of the space-time metrical field."

"Pearson's enthusiasm for W. K. Clifford's intuitive dynamics and physics, also for Clifford's violent hostility to traditional beliefs, influenced at least his earlier thinking. Both Clifford and Pearson were creative mathematicians; neither fitted the milk-and-water, namby-pamby 'great man' ideal of the 'great mathematician' which seems to be the accepted norm in historical accounts of mathematicians; and at least one of them would have hooted at the idea that he was, or was to become, an object of reverence for generations of students."

"We may... be treating merely as physical variations effects which are really due to changes in the curvature of our space; whether, in fact, some or all of those causes which we term physical may not be due to the geometrical construction of our space. There are three kinds of variation in the curvature of our space which we ought to consider as within the range of possibility. (i) Our space is perhaps really possessed of a curvature varying from point to point, which we fail to appreciate because we are acquainted with only a small portion of space, or because we disguise its small variations under changes in our physical condition which we do not connect with our change of position. The mind that could recognise this varying curvature might be assumed to know the absolute position of a point. For such a mind the postulate of the relativity of position would cease to have a meaning. It does not seem so hard to conceive such a state of mind as the late Professor Clerk-Maxwell would have had us believe. It would be one capable of distinguishing those so-called physical changes which are really geometrical or due to a change of position in space. (ii) Our space may be really same (of equal curvature), but its degree of curvature may change as a whole with the time. In this way our geometry based on the sameness of space would still hold good for all parts of space, but the change of curvature might produce in space a succession of apparent physical changes. (iii) We may conceive our space to have everywhere a nearly uniform curvature, but that slight variations of the curvature may occur from point to point, and themselves vary with the time. These variations of the curvature with the time may produce effects which we not unnaturally attribute to physical causes independent of the geometry of our space. We might even go so far as to assign to this variation of the curvature of space 'what really happens in that phenomenon which we term the motion of matter.'"

"Force is not a fact at all, but an idea embodying what is approximately the fact."

"Upon Clifford's death the labour of revision and completion was entrusted to Mr. R. C. Rowe, then Professor of Pure Mathematics at University College, London. ...On the sad death of Professor Rowe, in October 1884, I was requested... to take up the task of editing... For the latter half of Chapter III. and for the whole of Chapter IV. ...I am alone responsible. Yet whatever there is in them of value I owe to Clifford; whatever is feeble or obscure is my own. ...With Chapter V. my task has been by no means light. ...Without any notice of mass or force it seemed impossible to close a discussion on motion; something I felt must be added. I have accordingly introduced a few pages on the laws of motion. I have since found that Clifford intended to write a concluding chapter on mass. How to express the laws of motion in a form of which Clifford would have approved was indeed an insoluble riddle to me, because I was unaware of his having written anything on the subject. I have accordingly expressed, although with great hesitation, my own views on the subject; these may be concisely described as a strong desire to see the terms matter and force, together with the ideas associated with them, entirely removed from scientific terminology—to reduce, in fact, all dynamic to kinematic. I should hardly have ventured to put forward these views had I not recently discovered that they have (allowing for certain minor differences) the weighty authority of Professor Mach, of Prag. But since writing these pages I have also been referred to a discourse delivered by Clifford at the Royal Institution in 1873, some account of which appeared in Nature, June 10, 1880. Therein it is stated that 'no mathematician can give any meaning to the language about matter, force, inertia used in current text-books of mechanics.' This fragmentary account of the discourse undoubtedly proves that Clifford held on the categories of matter and force as clear and original ideas as on all subjects of which he has treated; only, alas! they have not been preserved."

"In March 1879 Clifford died at Madeira; six years afterwards a posthumous work is for the first time placed before the public. ...The original work as planned by Clifford was to have been entitled The First Principles of the Mathematical Sciences Explained to the Non-Mathematical, and to have contained six chapters, on Number, Space, Quantity, Position, Motion, and Mass respectively. Of the projected work Clifford in the year 1875 dictated the chapters on Number and Space completely, the first portion of the chapter on Quantity, and somewhat later nearly the entire chapter on Motion. The first two chapters were afterwards seen by him in proof, but never finally revised. Shortly before his death he expressed a wish that the book should only be published after very careful revision and that its title should be changed to The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences."

"We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe."

"If an event really happened which was not a part of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all. Are we then bound to believe that nature is absolutely and universally uniform? Certainly not; we have no right to believe anything of this kind. The rule only tells us that in forming beliefs which go beyond our experience, we may make the assumption that nature is practically uniform so far as we are concerned. Within the range of human action and verification, we may form, by help of this assumption, actual beliefs; beyond it, only those hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions."

"A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. … Even the fundamental "I am," which cannot be doubted, is no guide to action until it takes to itself "I shall be," which goes beyond experience. The question is not, therefore, "May we believe what goes beyond experience?" for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but "How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?""

"In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day. The very sacredness of the precious deposit imposes upon us the duty and the responsibility of testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to the utmost of our power. He who makes use of its results to stifle his own doubts, or to hamper the inquiry of others, is guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall never be able to blot out. When the labours and questionings of honest and brave men shall have built up the fabric of known truth to a glory which we in this generation can neither hope for nor imagine, in that pure and holy temple he shall have no part nor lot, but his name and his works shall be cast out into the darkness of oblivion for ever."

"We have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. However many nations and generations of men are brought into the witness-box they cannot testify to anything which they do not know. Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all. And when we get back at last to the true birth and beginning of the statement, two serious questions must be disposed of in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying?"

"What shall we say of that authority, more venerable and august than any individual witness, the time-honoured tradition of the human race? An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. It is around and about us and within us; we cannot think except in the forms and processes of thought which it supplies. Is it possible to doubt and to test it? and if possible, is it right? We shall find reason to answer that it is not only possible and right, but our bounden duty; that the main purpose of the tradition itself is to supply us with the means of asking questions, of testing and inquiring into things; that if we misuse it, and take it as a collection of cut-and-dried statements to be accepted without further inquiry, we are not only injuring ourselves here, but, by refusing to do our part towards the building up of the fabric which shall be inherited by our children, we are tending to cut off ourselves and our race from the human line."

"The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying. And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify."

"It is hardly in human nature that a man should quite accurately gauge the limits of his own insight; but it is the duty of those who profit by his work to consider carefully where he may have been carried beyond it. If we must needs embalm his possible errors along with his solid achievements, and use his authority as an excuse for believing what he cannot have known, we make of his goodness an occasion to sin."

"In what cases, then, let us ask in the first place, is the testimony of a man unworthy of belief? He may say that which is untrue either knowingly or unknowingly. In the first case he is lying, and his moral character is to blame; in the second case he is ignorant or mistaken, and it is only his knowledge or his judgment which is in fault. In order that we may have the right to accept his testimony as ground for believing what he says, we must have reasonable grounds for trusting his veracity, that he is really trying to speak the truth so far as he knows it; his knowledge, that he has had opportunities of knowing the truth about this matter; and his judgment, that he has made proper use of those opportunities in coming to the conclusion which he affirms. However plain and obvious these reasons may be, so that no man of ordinary intelligence, reflecting upon the matter, could fail to arrive at them, it is nevertheless true that a great many persons do habitually disregard them in weighing testimony. Of the two questions, equally important to the trustworthiness of a witness, "Is he dishonest?" and "May he be mistaken?" the majority of mankind are perfectly satisfied if one can, with some show of probability, be answered in the negative. The excellent moral character of a man is alleged as ground for accepting his statements about things which he cannot possibly have known."

"We have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyse the actions of our daily life. But because it is not enough to say, "It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence," without saying also what evidence is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire under what circumstances it is lawful to believe on the testimony of others; and then, further, we shall inquire more generally when and why we may believe that which goes beyond our own experience, or even beyond the experience of mankind."

"Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. "But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments." Then he should have no time to believe."

"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind."

"Is mind a force? It is held by some that the will acts as the match to gunpowder, by setting loose a store of energy, the matter of the brain being in unstable equilibrium. But you cannot have in nature an absolutely unstable equilibrium [i.e., an equilibrium capable of being upset by an infinitesimal force], because the universe is not at rest [and every motion in the universe produces a finite change, however small, in the resultant force at every point of space]. Therefore if mind is force, operating in the way suggested, it must be able to create a determinate quantity of energy. This is a supposition which, if true, would destroy its own evidence; for it would destroy the uniformity of nature, on which all of inference ultimately rests."

"Is a physical force, such as the attraction of earth, analogous to our "exertion of force" in muscular work? No, for the sensation of muscular effort is complicated. It involves nerve and muscle, which we know not to be present in the simpler cases, e.g., the motion of a stone let fall. To talk of pushing or pulling in such a case is a personification of external nature."

"General Results.—Force is a quality of position, definite in magnitude and direction at any point; not constant. Energy is the name of two different quantities. 1. Energy of motion, half the rate at which a body carries momentum. 2. Energy of position, defined by the statement of the law that the work done in getting from one position to another is the same by whatever path the change of position is made."

"In the cases of heat and electricity the form of the persisting energy is pretty well ascertained. But there are cases in which we do not know if it is energy of motion or energy position, such as that of '. In the burning of coal there is a falling together of carbon and oxygen [and heat is produced] but we do not know in which of the two forms, if either, the energy which comes out as heat existed in the chemical process. For such a case the is only a probable statement (though of great probability) to the effect that in all cases where a physical quality is convertible with energy, that quality is itself either energy of motion or energy position."