A body in motion tends to continue in the same state of relative rest or motion unless acted upon by some external force,
this force has to be regarded as self‐generated—even if not eternal, since this would amount to the recognition of perpetual motion—and so well self‐ calculated and self‐adjusted as to last from the beginning to the end of Kosmos. But “self‐generation” has still to generate from something, generation _ex‐nihilo_ being as contrary to reason as it is to Science. Thus we are placed once more between the horns of a dilemma: are we to believe in perpetual motion or in self‐generation _ex‐nihilo_? And if in neither, who or what is that something, which first produced that force or those forces?
There are such things in mechanics as superior levers, which give the impulse and act upon secondary or inferior levers. The former, however, need an impulse and occasional renovation, otherwise they would themselves very soon stop and fall back into their original status. What is the external force which puts and retains them in motion? Another dilemma!
As to the law of cosmical _non‐intervention_, it could be justified only in one case, namely, if the celestial mechanism were perfect; but it is not. The so‐called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and change incessantly; they are very often disturbed, and the wheels of even the sidereal locomotive itself occasionally jump off their invisible rails, as may be easily proved. Otherwise why should Laplace speak of the probable occurrence at some future time of an out‐and‐out reform in the arrangement of the planets;(409) or Lagrange maintain the gradual narrowing of the orbits; or our modern Astronomers, again, declare that the fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing? If the laws and forces which govern the behaviour of the celestial bodies are immutable, such modifications and wearing‐out of substance or fuel, of force and fluids, would be impossible; yet they are not denied. Therefore one has to suppose that such modifications will have to rely upon the laws of forces, which will have to self‐regenerate themselves once more on such occasions, thus producing an astral antinomy, and a kind of physical palinomy, since, as Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying themselves and reäcting in a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.