Attraction is the all-pervading, all-perverting sin of the established
philosophy, the scape-goat, on which the blunders of illustration
are heaped. Newtonians endow every atom of matter with not only an
attracting property, but another, as if to neutralise it--repulsion,
which renders both useless; as if to make matter both active and inert,
naturally, and as if Nature were planned on principles of complexity,
from having double the number of powers the universe is possessed of
atoms. One steam power would suffice for the whole of England, all
appendages being feasible. How is solidity either maintainable or
attainable, while attracting atoms are repelling atoms? The free,
uncombined condition of the atoms of the atmosphere, as well as their
_inertia_, proclaim their inability to attract each other; and the mere
crack in a pane of glass, that between bodies there is no attraction.
While it is left to be conceived by the so-taught rising generation,
that the atoms of a bar of iron are busily employed in attracting
one another, and as busily in repelling each other at the same time;
and that the same atoms are inert, the long-denounced aspersion
stands good, that there is no absurdity, however great, into which
philosophers have not fallen; which is removable only by Philosophers,
Professors and Teachers coalescing to reform the erroneous doctrines
universally promulgated, which cannot stand the test of rational
investigation, and for which, as National Instructors, they are morally
responsible.
Terrestrial attraction, attenuated on arriving at the moon,
and there sufficiently strong to prevent the satellite having
tangential flight, should be at the surface of the globe at least
two-hundred-and-forty-thousand times stronger; yet here a puff of the
breath drives the dust into the air, and the smallest winged insect
is not restrained by the attraction of the enormous magnet the earth
is considered, from escaping off the surface of the globe. There is
philosophy in mists, as well as "sermons in stones." Rain should come
down from above the clouds, if terrestrial attraction hold fast the
moon: mists and exhalations, by quitting the earth, solve the problem;
but we are ignorant of the philosophy, ways, and expressions of simple
nature; hence, ours is foreign philosophy.
In attributing the fall of bodies to the ground to attraction, it is
overlooked that the earth's greater attraction has to be exceeded by
the minor muscular, or explosive force, which caused the ascent. The
foregoing plain facts, although demonstrations to the contrary are on
record in the royalized TRANSACTIONS, but without reference to the
inability of inert matter to attract, are certain proof that attraction
is founded on a guess-work basis. Hence, that all learning is not
knowledge is a moral certainty; and that the nature of cause is not to
be arrived at by demonstrating the properties of lines and angles, time
has sufficiently proved.
Had the fall of Newton's apple been an effect of terrestrial
attraction, there should have been some stronger attraction from
somewhere above the tree, to make the juices of which the apple was
formed ascend from the ground, and capillary cannot be said to be
stronger than terrestrial attraction. There is nothing but puzzle,
contradiction, and inconsistency, in human opinion, where the natural
truth is unknown. Oh! apples, apples, why for discord sent? the first
cut short eternal life on earth; another turned "heaven-born reason" to
inventing dreams;--that heaven-born reason which tells us every day of
its yesterday's mistakes.