stars, and each is independent of the others.

Soon a distinction grows up between the things that seem to have a
spontaneous motion and those that have not, and spontaneous motion is
taken as the sign of life. And all inanimate things, of whatever kind,
are held to be moved, if they move at all, by a force outside
themselves. Their own force is limited to that of resisting, and does
not include that of originating motion. But though they cannot originate
motion they are observed to be capable of transmitting it. And the
notion of force is expanded by the recognition that it can be
communicated from one thing to another and yet to another, and that we
may have to go back many steps before we arrive at the will from which
it originated. We began with the notion of a power the action of which
was or appeared to be self-originated: we come to the notion of a power
the action of which is nothing more than the continuance of preceding
action. And the special characteristic of the action of this force as
thus conceived, which we may call the derivative force, is seen to be
its regularity, just as the special characteristic of the
self-originating action was its spontaneity.

As experience increases the regularity of the action of the derivative
force is more and more observable, and then arises the notion of a law
or rule regulating the action of every such force. And a perpetually
increasing number of phenomena are brought under this head, and are
shown to be, not the immediate results of self-originating action, but
the more or less remote results of derivative action governed by laws.
And even a large number of those phenomena, which specially belong to
life and living creatures, in whom alone, if anywhere, the
self-originating action is to be found, are observed to be subject to
law and therefore to be the issue not of self-originating but of