We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts which without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as imperfect and therefore classed with motions. Take for instance living and life. The life of a definite person implies a certain adequate period, just as his happiness is no merely instantaneous thing. Life and happiness are, in other words, of the nature ascribed to Motion: both therefore must be treated as motions, and Motion must be regarded as a unity, a single genus; besides the quantity and quality belonging to Substance we must take count of the motion manifested in it. We may further find desirable to distinguish bodily from psychic motions or spontaneous motions from those induced by external forces, or the original from the derivative, the original motions being activities, whether externally related or independent, while the derivative will be Passions. But surely the motions having external tendency are actually identical with those of external derivation: the cutting issuing from the cutter and that effected in the object are one, though to cut is not the same as to be cut. Perhaps however the cutting issuing from the cutter and that which takes place in the cut object are in fact not one, but "to cut" implies that from a particular Act and motion there results a different motion in the object cut. Or perhaps the difference lies not in the fact of being cut, but in the distinct emotion supervening, pain for example: passivity has this connotation also. But when there is no pain, what occurs? Nothing, surely, but the Act of the agent upon the patient object: this is all that is meant in such cases by Action. Action, thus, becomes twofold: there is that which occurs in the external, and that which does not. The duality of Action and Passion, suggested by the notion that Action takes place in an external, is abandoned. Even writing, though taking place upon an external object, does not call for passivity, since no effect is produced, upon the tablet beyond the Act of the writer, nothing like pain; we may be told that the tablet has been inscribed, but this does not suffice for passivity. Again, in the case of walking there is the earth trodden upon, but no one thinks of it as having experienced Passion . Treading on a living body, we think of suffering, because we reflect not upon the walking but upon the ensuing pain: otherwise we should think of suffering in the case of the tablet as well. It is so in every case of Action: we cannot but think of it as knit into a unity with its opposite, Passion. Not that this later "Passion" is the opposite of Action in the way in which being burned is the opposite of burning: by Passion in this sense we mean the effect supervening upon the combined facts of the burning and the being burned, whether this effect be pain or some such process as withering. Suppose this Passion to be treated as of itself producing pain: have we not still the duality of agent and patient, two results from the one Act? The Act may no longer include the will to cause pain; but it produces something distinct from itself, a pain-causing medium which enters into the object about to experience pain: this medium, while retaining its individuality, produces something yet different, the feeling of pain. What does this suggest? Surely that the very medium- the act of hearing, for instance- is, even before it produces pain or without producing pain at all, a Passion of that into which it enters. But hearing, with sensation in general, is in fact not a Passion. Yet to feel pain is to experience a Passion- a Passion however which is not opposed to Action.

Hence you inquire concerning the difference in the last things pertaining to them; but you leave uninvestigated such things as are first, and most hon...

All things incorporeal when in a body are subject unto passion, and in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions. For every thing that...

Are not these called independent of time, not by way of privation, but of diminution, as that which is sudden, not that which has taken place without...

As long as the heart has not attained complete peace, it cannot move itself. One moves the movement and forgets the movement; this is not movement in...

This little chapter is not without its special difficulty. Are we to read as a word implying motion, with as its determinative, or as implying...

Some, then, say that causes are properties of bodies; and others of incorporeal substances; others say that the body is properly speaking cause, and...

Night follows day; and day night. The pendulum swings from Summer to Winter, and then back again. The corpuscles, atoms, molecules, and all masses of...

The Principle of Rhythm The Principle of Rhythm manifests that universal regular swing or time-beat which is apparent in all the manifested world, fro...

Of this I'll give thee here on earth an instance, which the eye can see. Regard the animals down here - a man, for instance, swimming! The water...

The cause of things is predicated in a threefold manner. One, What the cause is, as the statuary; a second, Of what it is the cause of becoming, a...

In all Rhythm there is recurring motion, change, and activity; action or motion in opposite directions; alternations between the opposite poles of...

There is always an action and reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and a sinking; manifested in all of the airs and phenomena of the...

Again: "Action begins." This because from the very inception of the Germ in the Cosmic Egg there is the manifestation of Activity, Motion, and...

And if all things in motion desire, not repose, but ever to make known their own proper movement, even this is an aspiration after the Divine Peace of...

The following statement from a modern text book may serve to point to the difference between the conception of Pure Duration, and Time: "Pure...

After these things, you again subjoin another division for yourself, “ in which you separate the essences of the more excellent genera by the...

The term "periodicity" so often employed in connection with the subject of Rhythm, means "state of occurring or recurring at fixed intervals of...

Hence, through these things such a corporeal-formed division as you introduce, is demonstrated to be false. It is, indeed, especially necessary not...

Must we not understand this in a sense befitting God? For we must reverently suppose that He is moved, not as beseems carriage, or change, or alterati...

And of things without life, plants, they say, are moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them that plants are without life. ...