Page:Truth and Error (1898).djvu/31

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QUANTITIES OR PROPERTIES THAT ARE MEASURED
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for we have often discovered that which we thought was absolute was in fact relation; but rest is a relation between terms which are absolute. The internal or molecular motions of the body at rest have a certain relation to the external or astronomic motions of the body which are changed when the body is given molar motion, but the absolutes still remain, though deflected.

Human beings are molar bodies, and have a deep interest in one another as such and in the other molar bodies with which they are associated. Molar bodies and their relations are the first bodies discovered by primitive man, and his converse with the external world at first seems to be wholly with molar bodies. Molar bodies are those in which he first discovers relations and with which he first consciously and purposely associates, and they become the type of the others. Molecular bodies are known as such only to science. The stellar bodies are first believed to be molar bodies, and it is long before the corporeal structure of the earth is discovered as a body of great magnitude associated with other bodies more nearly commensurate with them, as the sun, moon and stars.

Of the internal relations of molecular bodies little is known even yet, and in the same manner of the internal relations of stellar bodies, but little is yet known. Our ideas of molecular and stellar bodies are largely ideas of their individuality, or as units related to units of the same order, while their constituent units scarcely receive consideration. In the mechanical or molar world the relations of parts are immeasurably more numerous than the parts themselves. Not only are rocks multifarious and the