were, at some remote epoch of time, even _more
than together_--is it not because originally, and therefore normally,
they were _One_--that now, in all circumstances--at all points--in all
directions--by all modes of approach--in all relations and through all
conditions--they struggle _back_ to this absolutely, this irrelatively,
this unconditionally _one_?

Some person may here demand:--"Why--since it is to the _One_ that the
atoms struggle back--do we not find and define Attraction 'a merely
general tendency to a centre?'--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 centre _is_ merely the tendency each to each, and not
any tendency to a centre as such.--Thus it will be seen, also, that the
establishment of my propositions would involve no _neces