Russia saw herself so, and so must an American
see her; he had no more to do than measure, if he could, the
mass. Was volume or intensity the stronger? What and where was
the vis nova that could hold its own before this prodigious
ice-cap of vis inertiae? What was movement of inertia, and what
its laws?
Naturally a student knew nothing about mechanical laws, but he
took for granted that he could learn, and went to his books to
ask. He found that the force of inertia had troubled wiser men
than he. The dictionary said that inertia was a property of
matter, by which matter tends, when at rest, to remain so, and,
when in motion, to move on in a straight line. Finding that his
mind refused to imagine itself at rest or in a straight line, he
was forced, as usual, to let it imagine something else; and since
the question concerned the mind, and not matter, he decided from
personal experience that his mind was never at rest, but moved --
when normal -- about something it called a motive, and never
moved without motives to move it. So long as these motives were
habitual, and their attraction regular, the consequent result
might, for convenience, be called movement of inertia, to
distinguish it from movement caused by newer or higher
attraction; but the greater the bulk to move, the greater must be
the force to accelerate or deflect it.
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