Читать книгу A Treatise on Mechanics онлайн

18 страница из 91

(16.) These and many other phenomena observed in the immediate productions of nature, or developed by mechanical and chemical processes, prove that the materials of which bodies are formed are susceptible of minuteness which infinitely exceeds the powers of sensible observation, even when those powers have been extended by all the aids of science. Shall we then conclude that matter is infinitely divisible, and that there are no original constituent atoms of determinate magnitude and figure at which all subdivision must cease? Such an inference would be unwarranted, even had we no other means of judging the question, except those of direct observation; for it would be imposing that limit on the works of nature which she has placed upon our powers of observing them. Aided by reason, however, and a due consideration of certain phenomena which come within our immediate powers of observation, we are frequently able to determine other phenomena which are beyond those powers. The diurnal motion of the earth is not perceived by us, because all things around us participate in it, preserve their relative position, and appear to be at rest. But reason tells us that such a motion must produce the alternations of day and night, and the rising and setting of all the heavenly bodies; appearances which are plainly observable, and which betray the cause from which they arise. Again, we cannot place ourselves at a distance from the earth, and behold the axis on which it revolves, and observe its peculiar obliquity to the orbit in which the earth moves; but we see and feel the vicissitudes of the seasons, an effect which is the immediate consequence of that inclination, and by which we are able to detect it.