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Updated: May 6, 2025
The Russians, never was such VIS INERTIAE as theirs now. They stood like sacks of clay, like oxen already dead; not even if you shot a bullet through them, would they fall at once, says Archenholtz, but seem to be deliberate about it. Complete disorder reigned on both sides; except that the Prussians could always form again when bidden, the Russians not.
We surely comprehend as little the operations of one as of the other. Is it more difficult to conceive that motion may arise from impulse than that it may arise from volition? All we know is our profound ignorance in both cases . I need not examine at length the vis inertiae which is so much talked of in the new philosophy, and which is ascribed to matter.
I have given, I fear, a somewhat lengthy account of it; not for its literary merits, which are small, but as being the best native defence of the Papacy I have come across. The dull dead vis inertiae which formed the real strength of the Papacy has been of late exchanged for a petty useless fussiness.
But whether it was that dread of the army and of the multitude nearer home outweighed in the Carthaginian council the fear of Rome; or that they perceived the impossibility of retracing such a step once taken; or that the mere -vis inertiae- prevented any definite action, they resolved at length to resolve on nothing and, if not to wage war, to let it nevertheless be waged.
The British people, in spite of their hereditary prejudice against the Irish, were not averse to the measure; the Tories were, as usual, powerless against it; yet so strong has been the vis inertiae of Whiggery that it has won a notable victory over common-sense and sentiment combined, and has drawn over to it a section of those hitherto known as Radicals, and probably would have drawn all Radicals over but for the personal ascendancy of Mr.
I believe that, if we had the books Cicero wrote upon this subject, we should there find pretty stories; for he was so possessed with this passion, that, if he had dared, I think he could willingly have fallen into the excess that others did, that virtue itself was not to be coveted, but upon the account of the honour that always attends it: "Paulum sepultae distat inertiae Celata virtus:"
Blameless, even austere in their own lives, patrons of learning, sincerely pious, they lacked the Reformer's passion, without which it was vain to combat the vis inertiae; generated by long years of clerical sloth, and of the formalism by which the highest Mysteries were vulgarly distorted into superstitions and Faith into ceremonial observances.
The cottager can scarcely nod his employer a common greeting in the morning. Courtesy is no longer practised. The idea in the man's mind appears to be to express contempt for big employer's property. It is an unpleasant symptom. At present it is not, however, an active, but a passive force; a moral vis inertiae. Here again the clergyman meets with a cold rebuff.
"Sister Amy," said Webb, as they went down to supper, "you must be careful of yourself, and others must be careful of you, for you have not much vis inertiae. Some outside influences might touch you, as I would touch your piano, and make sad discord."
It was, indeed, more than "not caring," which merely implies a certain degree of vis inertiae to be subdued before an object can be attained, and that the object itself does not seem to be of sufficient importance to call out the requisite energy. On the contrary, Susan exerted herself to avoid change and variety.
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