Morning journal and courier., 1882-03-15
Lectures to Mechanics.

chanics was given by President Porter at the
 North Sheffield hall last evening. The Iec-
 turer took as his subject Mechanical force,
 nerve force mind force,' and his lecture was
 decidedly interesting from a scientific point
 of view and the facts were presented in a
 very clear and intelligent manner. 1.-The
 subject under consideration, :" said the speak
 CT, lis one of great importance, Let us first
 consider what advances have been made in
 the scientific study and investigation of me-
 chanical force When I was in college and
 attended the lectures of the late Professor Silliman, he was occupied with imponderables, or material agents or substances which do not weigh anything. Just previous to this the galvanic battery had come into general notice, and it was supposed that galvanism was one of those unweighed forces. I re- member, among other experiments, that the professor connected the poles of battery by an iron spike, and then plunged the plates into the liquid The color began to gather in the spike, and it began to grow hot. l also recollect his experiments in chemical decom- position The mysterious power was sup posed to have brought to view heat and light. At that time the recognized agents were mat
 ter, as endowed with cohesion and gravita tion, chemical agents imponderable agents and vital powers.
 ''All this has become changed by the later discoveries with regard to heat. It was found that brass shavings, bored out rapidly, were very hot, and this raised various ques- tions as to the properties of heat. About thirty years ago it was discovered that heat was the product of motion. In my time heat was supposed to be material, latent and sensible. It was discovered that all these so- called imponderable agents could be pro- duced by the motions of molecules. These facts were discovered and the doctrine of the correlation of force was established sasaWith a certain rapidity of motion heat would be ! produced, and by other motions light The doctrine of the conservation of force was also elicited. It was found that if you caused a certain amount of motion 1t would pro- duce particles of heat, and if you continued the motion could be brought back-the heat { would produce motion. This was received ! as true and valid in respect to all mechanical relations. Then 1t was found that the chemi- cal power obeyed the same law. Possibly and probably chemical combinations were the result of the powerful action of chem icals, and it has been maintained by an emi- nent chemist that what are called molecules are atoms placed in such position that all such powers are to be traced back to motion among them. Following came the doctrine of evolution. What we call the simplest forms of being are developed into higher forms of being under certain circumstances. The conclusion is drawn that what call mechanical force we begin with that we then come to chemical force; then to nerve force, and this is evolved into mind force q will not stop to speak of the weak l places in this doctrine, but will cali your At- tention to one or two important points In the first place, in all these reasonings it has not been discovered that simple motion is a l power at all; it is only condition under which certain things exist. In the second place, it has been forgotten that the agent of every phenomena is that which has the force; the particles themselves possess power. Drive 8 cannon ball with very rapid motion against an iron shield, and the force is so great that the ball becomes hot, and several explosions occur. As soon as that motion was arrested it went into the ball, and got all the mole- cules into such motion that the ball becomes like molten mass; the molecules are rubbed together so rapidly that they become hot. The motion is the condition. In what we call chemical mpounds-detonating sub- stances-if the motion is what has the power to detonate, it belongs to the particles them selves. The same is true also of the power to evolve in what is living. If there was not in the seed of the plant the power to produce, under favoring conditions, the various changes which the plant undergoes these changes would never be produced. If it is true that the nebulae of this universe at it's formation had the possibility of all the changes that have taken place, then these particular nebulae had the power, under fa- vorable circumstances, to put in all these changes.
 "Let us now consider life and nerve force. We find that in a certain sense we can account for some phenomena by mechanical force. The laws of mechanics hold good in the action
 of the various organs of our body. The pro- cess of assimilation of food is due to chemical
 changes. Muscular activity involves waste
 of heat, which in time leads to the addition
 of heat. Capacity for motion is attended by
 capacity for heat, and heat passes into
 motion When we step over the boundary
 between the organic and the inorganic, we
 must try to explain all phenomena by mechan-
 ical force. All plants and animals grow with
 chemical force, which commences as soon as
 they begin to grow. The plant animal
 grows by preparing it's own food, and al-
 though it lives on chemical food it has to
 cook it before eating. We cannot explain
 this process by anything analogous to pro-
 ducing heat by motion. The various organs
 of our body are united together into an organ
 ism. The parts are necessary to each other,
 and each lives upon the other. The conspir-
 ing activity of our bodies cannot be explained
 by mechanical motion. But the brain or
 nervous system can do anything. We may
 assign to the brain it's capacity by simply
 mechanical force, combined with chemical
 force, for all that is wonderful in life and
 mind. On these suggestions men hang their
 religious and scientific faith.
 "There are two or three very interesting
 sets of facts which require solution. First,
 we find that the brain is a very highly devel-
 oped kind of matter. In the second place,
 it's quantity seems to be proportionate to the
 sensations and intellect of the being.
 whale weighing five tons has brain about
 as large as 8 weighing 16O pounds.
 Less intelligent animals have much smaller
 brains. In men small brain accompanies
 narrow intellect. In a certain sense, tn e
 brain is the agent of the sensational and in.
 tellectual organizations. Again, all expert
 ments in respect to the brain by vivisection
 go to show that very large part of the
 brain is occupied by the sensation of direc-
 tion of motion, and the intellectual portion is
 small. Many people say that the front por-
 tion of the brain is where the intellect is To-
 cated, but accidents have demonstrated that
 such is not the fact. An analysis of what is
 called matter is not notion that is an agent,
 but the particles do the work. What are
 called sensations are the real functions and
 there must be an agent of these functions.
 These sensations constitute a very
 large part of our experience, and we seem
 to feel that agent in ourselves. When we
 bring our brain under these sensations, we
 have the act Let us go step higher, and notice our intellectual functions. These are certainly part of our real experience We think, we judge, we remember, we compare, and do this all day. These higher functions belong to an agent. This agent has neither length, breadth nor thickness. It is not the brain. If we could look into each others heads and see all the movements of the brain | while we have been thinking, speculating 1 and comparing, would you have learned as 1 to what they were thinking about? But if ! you look into your neighbours face you see | the expression of feeling-how he feels, | whether he believes or not-and animating his face is an intelligent spirit. AS we l look upon the physical universe see l that all it's conditions act under laws. The l laws of dependence are one thing, and phe- l nomena are quite another.
 s'The conclusion is that pervading all there |
 is some omnipresent force, capable of all l things The universe is made up of material l agents. All agents have material properties l which act in accord with their propensities. l Alongside of these are the spiritual agents, and they have laws which act just the same l as the material laws, and there is one agent | on which everything depends. Look into your neighbours face, and you do not see the mind, but the expression of it. So we look