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Show 112 MUSCULAR FEELING. if he wi11 but shut his eyes at the same ti_me, so as to prevent the distraction of sig~t from with?ut, he will find that the unseen touch IS more easily and more accurately performed, than that upon which the eye looks, and, as we suppose, directs with the most studied attention. Thus the gravitation of matter is not only the most general property of matter, but it is the source and foundation of all that we can observe or know about material things; for our first sensations, which the mind must have before it can either compare or infer, are, and can be, nothing but resistances of gravitation to the action of our muscles ; and the probability, nay, the certainty, is, that we feel them in the weight of the muscles themselves, before we can have the slightest notiem of the existence of any thing else. It is impossible for us,. by any actual division we can make, even by the a1d of the most powerful magnifying glasses that can be made or even imagined, to arrive at any know ledge of the primary atoms, beyond which matter cann'?t ~e divided. But it is probable that the first sensatiOn IS that of a single atom in the muscle ; and that, consequently, the first element, or, if you will, the first material of our knowledge, is the first element of matter itself,-that we ]earn by mere atoms, which we can no more know than we can remember the original sensation or feeling to which they give rise. It has been already noticed that the muscular action of the hand,-and the stronger and more healthy that the hand is, it does it the more nicely,-can uot only divide space a thousand times more minutely than the naked eye, but that it can beat the eye, notwithstanding all the assistance of its magnifying glasses. And now we can see the reason : the eye is a pupil; and not only knows no more than the hand or the muscles can teach it, but as it knows through the medium of a second material apparntus) it is a stage further removed from mental perception SECOND LAW OF GRAVITATION. 113 than the muscles~ so that while the muscular feeling proceP,ds by atoms to which. we. can assign no meal sure of bulk or even of gravitatiOn, the eye can take /COlrnizance only of collections of those atoms (the smallest most likely amounting to countless mil-lions), which have been known in their succession, and compared and summed up by the mind from the action of the muscles. So, our first knowledge of matter is the knowledge of gravitation, and nothing but gravitation; but it is gravitation which we cannot measure in the primary particle; and therefore it would be vain for us to inquire, or seek to be informed of what gravitation is, because we have pursued our analysis to its very beginning, and there we equally speak truth when we say "gravitation is matter," and "matter is gravitation;" for to our perceptim1 they are one and the same. 'rhe second law of gravitation, which it is nece~sary for every useful observer of nature to know and to bear in mind, is the law of its variation. That law is no variation in the quantity of gravitation itself, because, being the primary quality of matter, gravitation is as indestructible, either in whole or in part, as matter itself, and can be destroyed only by the same power that made it. When we divide matter, we divide gravitation along witn it: but there is no ingenuity in man, and we know of no process in nature by which any one portion of material substance can be deprived of the least shade of its material quantity. The little particle of water, while it is rising in vapour through the dry air, so fine that no eye or instrument can recognise its existence, has the quality of gravitatiGn as perfect as if it were dashing down the rocks iu the mighty flood at Niagara; and the smoke which ascends upward in the free air would, in a vessel from which the air had been all pumped out, He at the bottom the same as a stone. The cork that floats on the surface of water has the very K2 |