The image needed here is that of a new centre, or
preponderating mass, artificially introduced on earth in the
midst of a system of attractive forces that previously made their
own equilibrium, and constantly induced to accelerate its motion
till it shall establish a new equilibrium. A dynamic theory would
begin by assuming that all history, terrestrial or cosmic,
mechanical or intellectual, would be reducible to this formula if
we knew the facts.
For convenience, the most familiar image should come first; and
this is probably that of the comet, or meteoric streams, like the
Leonids and Perseids; a complex of minute mechanical agencies,
reacting within and without, and guided by the sum of forces
attracting or deflecting it. Nothing forbids one to assume that
the man-meteorite might grow, as an acorn does, absorbing light,
heat, electricity -- or thought; for, in recent times, such
transference of energy has become a familiar idea; but the
simplest figure, at first, is that of a perfect comet -- say that
of 1843 -- which drops from space, in a straight line, at the
regular acceleration of speed, directly into the sun, and after
wheeling sharply about it, in heat that ought to dissipate any
known substance, turns back unharmed, in defiance of law, by the
path on which it came. The mind, by analogy, may figure as such a
comet, the better because it also defies law.
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