—why, in especial, do not your atoms—the atoms which you describe as having been irradiated from a centre—proceed at once, rectilinearly, back to the central point of their origin?"
I reply that
they do; as will be distinctly shown; but that the cause of their so doing is quite irrespective of the centre
as such. They all tend rectilinearly towards a centre, because of the sphereicity with which they have been irradiated into space. Each atom, forming one of a generally uniform globe of atoms, finds more atoms in the direction of the centre, of course, than in any other, and in that direction, therefore, is impelled—but is
not thus impelled because the centre is
the point of its origin. It is not to any
point that the atoms are allied. It is not any
locality, either in the concrete or in the abstract, to which I suppose them bound. Nothing like
location was conceived as their origin. Their source lies in the principle,
Unity.
This is their lost parent.
This they seek always—immediately—in all directions—wherever it is even partially to be found; thus appeasing, in some measure, the ineradicable tendency, while on the way to its absolute satisfaction in the end. It follows from all this, that any principle which shall be adequate to account for the
law, or
modus operandi, of the attractive force in general, will account for this law in particular:—that is to say, any principle which will show why the atoms should tend to their
general centre of irradiation with forces inversely proportional to the squares of the distances, will be admitted as satisfactorily accounting, at the same time, for the tendency, according to the same law, of these atoms each to each:—
for the tendency to the
