The Walt Whitman Archive
Complete Prose Works
"Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great
Bear or Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence the imaginary
Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form the bowl and handle will
have changed places. The misty nebulae are moving, and besides are whirling
around in great spirals, some one way, some another. Every molecule of
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matter in
the whole universe is swinging to and fro; every particle of ether which fills
space is in jelly-like vibration. Light is one kind of motion, heat another,
electricity another, magnetism another, sound another. Every human sense is the
result of motion; every perception, every thought is but motion of the molecules
of the brain translated by that incomprehensible thing we call mind. The
processes of growth, of existence, of decay, whether in worlds, or in the
minutest organisms, are but motion."