Cosmos, Vol. 4

change, which presents the eternally shifting appearance of becoming and destruction: the organizing spirit, when investigating the earthly realm, often strives—sometimes with a sense of frustration—to find simple laws of motion. Already in the physics of Aristotle it is stated: "the fundamental principles of all nature are change and motion; whoever has not recognized these, does not recognize nature either" (Physics, Book III, Chapter 1, page 200 in the Bekker edition Aristotle's Physics, or Physica Auscultatio, is a foundational text for Western science); and, pointing toward the diversity of matter and "difference in essence," he calls motion in relation to the category of quality: transformation, alloiōsis original Greek: ἀλλοίωσις: which is very different from mere mixing, mixis original Greek: μίξis, and a penetration which does not exclude subsequent separation (On Generation and Corruption, Book I, Chapter 1, page 327).

The unequal rising of liquids in capillary tubes; the endosmosis endosmosis: the passage of a fluid through a membrane so active in all organic cells, which is likely a consequence of capillarity; the condensation of gases in porous bodies (of oxygen gas in platinum black, with a pressure equal to a force of more than 700 atmospheres; of carbonic acid in boxwood charcoal, of which more than 1/3 is condensed into a liquid state on the walls of the cells); the chemical action of contact substances, which by their presence (catalytically) cause or destroy compounds without taking part in them themselves: — all these phenomena teach us that substances exert an attraction toward one another at infinitely small distances, which depends on their specific essence. Such attractions cannot be conceived without motions excited by them, though these motions escape our eye. In what proportion the mutual molecular—