date

28 Sept. 1814 + Logic Ch.2
28 Sept. 1814 +

Logic

Ch.2. Ontology

Entities classed

20

14

Motion. That the entity designated by the word motion is a fictitious entity seems at least equally beyond dispute.

A body the body in question is in motion: here unless in motion be considered as an abbreviated expression substituted for in a state of motion, as we say in a state of rest, motion is a receptacle, in which the body is considered as stationed. The motion of this body is slow or is retrograde. Here the body is a stationary object - a station or starting post, of or from which the motion is considered as opening /proceeding/.

Necessarily included in the idea of motion is the idea of place and time. A body has been in motion - when ? in what

case ? When having at or in one point of time been in any one place, at another point of time it has been in any other.

Of any and every corporeal real entity a similitude is capable of being exhibited as well in the form of a body, for instance a model, as in the form of a surface - as in painting, or drawing, or engraving; which, in every case, is like the object represented, a stationary, permanent, and, unless by internal decay, or external force, an unchanging and unmoving object.

But by no such graphical similitude, by no picture, by no model, by no stationary object, can any motion be represented. A representation of the body as it appeared in the place occupied by it at a point of time anterior to that at which the motion commenced; a representation of the same body as it appeared in the place occupied by it at a point of time posterior to that at which the motion commenced; in these two representations , conjoined or separate, may be seen all that can be done towards the representation of motion by any permanent imitative work.

Even on the table of the mind, in imagination, in idea, in no other way can any motion be represented. There not being any real entity to represent, the entity cannot be any other than fictitious: the name employed for the purpose of representation cannot therefore be anything else than the name of a fictitious entity.

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    Considered at any two contiguous points of time, every real entity is either in motion or at rest.

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