f mechanics is either the
application or the neutralization of the laws of motion. As for motion
pure and simple, I tell you humbly, that we cannot possibly define it.
That disposed of, unvarying phenomena have been observed which accompany
the actions of solids and fluids. If we set up the conditions by
which these phenomena are brought to pass, we can transport bodies or
communicate locomotive power to them at a predetermined rate of speed.
We can project them, divide them up in a few or an infinite number of
pieces, accordingly as we break them or grind them to powder; we can
twist bodies or make them rotate, modify, compress, expand, or extend
them. The whole science, sir, rests upon a single fact.

"You see this ball," he went on; "here it lies upon this slab. Now,
it is over there. What name shall we give to what has taken place,
so natural from a physical point of view, so amazing from a moral?
Movement, locomotion, changing of place? What prodigious vanity lurks
underneath the words. Does a name solve the difficulty? Yet it is the
whole of our science for all that. Our machines either make direct use
of this agency, this fact, or they convert it. This trifling phenomenon,
applied to large masses, would send Paris flying. We can increase speed
by an expenditure of force, and augment the force by an increase of
speed. But what are speed and force? Our science is as powerless to tell
us that as to create motion. Any movement whatever is an immense power,
and man does not create power of any kind. Everything is movement,
thought itself is a movement, upon movement nature is based. Death is a
movement whose limitations are little known. If God is eternal, be
sure that He moves perpetually; perhaps God is movement. That is
why movement, like God is inexplicable, unfathomable, unlimited,
incomprehensible, intangible. Who has ever touched, comprehended, or
measured movement? We feel its effects without seeing it; we can even
deny them as we can deny the existence of a God. Where is it? Where
is it not? Whence comes it? What is its source? What is its end? It
surrounds us, it intrudes upon us, and yet escapes us. It is evident as
a fact, obscure as an abstraction; it is at once effect and cause. It
requires space, even as we, and what is space? Movement alone recalls
it to us; without movement, space is but an empty meaningless word.
Like space, like creation, like the infinite, movement is an insoluble
problem which con