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“Cum formarum naturalium et corporalium esse non consistat nisi in unione ad materiam, ejusdem agentis esse videtur eas producere cujus est materiam transmutare. Secundo, quia cum hujusmodi formae non excedant virtutem et ordinem et facultatem principiorum agentium in natura, nulla videtur necessitas eorum originem in principia reducere altiora.” Aquinas, De Pot. Q. iii, a, 11. (Quoted in Brit. Assoc. Address, Section D, 1911.)

“… I would that all other natural phenomena might similarly be deduced from mechanical principles. For many things move me to suspect that everything depends upon certain forces, in virtue of which the particles of bodies, through forces not yet understood, are either impelled together so as to cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one another.” Newton, in Preface to the Principia. (Quoted by Mr. W. Spottiswoode, Brit. Assoc. Presidential Address, 1878.)

“When Science shall have subjected all natural phenomena to the laws of Theoretical Mechanics, when she shall be able to predict the result of every combination as unerringly as Hamilton predicted conical refraction, or Adams revealed to us the existence of Neptune—that we cannot say. That day may never come, and it is certainly far in the dim future. We may not anticipate it, we may not even call it possible. But none the less are we bound to look to that day, and to labour for it as the crowning triumph of Science:—when Theoretical Mechanics shall be recognised as the key to every physical enigma, the chart for every traveller through the dark Infinite of Nature.” J. H. Jellett, in Brit. Assoc. Address, Section A, 1874.