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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
uniformly in a straight line, except in so far as it is made to change that state by external forces, and put to himself the question, how such substances as jivas and lighter kinds of matter come to rest from a state of motion. The principle of friction does not apply to either of them and inertia is not a quality of souls. The only other force known to science which may be regarded as capable of assisting them in coming to repose is gravitation, but that is concerned only with the determination of the direction which a moving body may take and although it is possible to say that gravitation itself may ultimately discharge the function of Adharma by bringing a moving body to rest by the side of the one towards which it has gravitated, it is clear that its operation is confined to attracting one body towards another. Besides, gravitation is not an all-pervading medium, though Sir Isaac Newton* seems to have had a true inkling into the nature of Adharma when he ventured a surmise about gravitation being dependent on an etherial medium pervading space.
Further reflection will show that gravitation cannot be the medium of stationariness in the case of material bodies; for given a body in motion gravitation can only determine the direction of its motion, but has no further concern with its fate-whether it come to rest alongside the mass by which it is attracted or remain perpetually sliding and rolling about its surface?
The trend of the scientific thought seems to suggest the law that stationariness of a mass is the resultant of the 'pull' exerted on it by other masses of matter See Matter and Motion,' by J. C. Maxwell.
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