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It is a form of the Proteus-like perpetuum mobile-a most incredible thing if not seen.

Certum quippe est ultra Nili fontes multos reperiri Nanos, qui tamen non cum Gruibus, sed cum Elephantis perpetuum gerant bellum. Præcipuum quippe Eboris commercium in regno magni Macoki per istos transigitur Homunciones; habitant in Sylvis, & mira dexteritate Elephantos sagittis conficiunt. Carnibus vescuntur, Dentes verô Jagis divendunt, illi autem Congentibus & Lusitanis.

It is a form of the Proteus-like perpetuum mobile-a most incredible thing if not seen.

For to Goethe nature is far from being a piece of mechanism which can be calculated on and summed up in mathematical formulæ, an everlastingperpetuum mobile,” a magnificent all-powerful machine. In fact, all this and especially the wordmachineexpresses exactly what Goethe’s conception was most directly opposed to.

The Prætor's proclamation, thus lengthened by a new portion every year, obtained the name of the Edictum Perpetuum, that is, the continuous or unbroken edict.

We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact ofentropy.” We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, a perpetuum mobile.

The episode in C rings of the mazurka, and the A major section is of exceeding loveliness; Its coda is characteristic. This valse is a favorite, and who need wonder? The F major Valse, the last of this series, is a whirling, wild dance of atoms. It has the perpetuum mobile quality, and older masters would have prolonged its giddy arabesques into pages of senseless spinning.

Let us however leave aside the idea of a perpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly?

But the sensible signs of the supreme Life according to our faulty perception are temporal and point to an end. The Universe that we perceive is not a perpetuum mobile. The laws of motion that we know all come to a standstill. As the scholars put it: there is increasing entropy and there are irreversible processes. This does not satisfy our inward consciousness of the supreme Life.

If, as seems fairly certain, the Basil Valentine whose writings were supposed to have inspired Paracelsus was a hoax and his works were made up in great part from the writings of Paracelsus, then to our medical Luther, and not to the mythical Benedictine monk, must be attributed a great revival in the search for the Philosopher's Stone, for the Elixir of Life, for a universal medicine, for the perpetuum mobile and for an aurum potabile.