I need help understanding this Nikola Tesla Work

[Money]

In an a document by him called "On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena"

i need help understanding this

 

"If i am not precisley conscious of the motion, it is, because the images are vague or indistinct, being blurred by the superimposition of many. But when i perform the motion, does the impulse which prompts me to the action come from within or from without?"

 

a few sentences later after describing the ideas of some people he explains what he thinks the answer is. This is where i got confused

 

"I am convinced that the motive impulse must come from the outside. For, consider the lowest organism we know-and there probably many lower ones-an aggregation of a few cells only. If it is capable of voluntary motion it can perform an infinite number of motions, all definite and precise. But now a mechanism consisting of a finite number of parts and few at that, cannot perform are infinite number of definite motions, hence the impulses which govern its movements must come from the environment."

 

thats his answer the ways he writes its got me confused

and this is the rest of this paragraph of what he says rite after that

 

"So, the atom, the ulterior element of the Universe's structure, is tossed about in space eternally, a play to external influences, like a boat in a troubled sea. Were it to stop its motion it would die: hatter at rest, if such a thin; could exist, would be matter dead. Death of matter! Never has a sentence of deeper philosophical meaning been uttered. This is the way in which Prof. Dewar forcibly expresses it in the description of his admirable experiments, in which liquid oxygen is handled as one handles water, and air at ordinary pressure is made to condense and even to solidify by the intense cold: experiments, which serve to illustrate, in his language, the last feeble manifestations of life, the last quiverings of matter about to die. But human eyes shall not witness this death. There is no death of matter, throughout the infinite universe, all has to move, to vibrate, that is to live."

 

http://www.free-energy.ws/pdf/1893onlight.pdf

 

thanx : )

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

all that i posted can be found near the end of page 5 - beginning of page 6

Edited May 7, 2009 by Money

[Randian]

Tesla was very good at making clear his philosophical premises in his work. In another paper, he described the forces that work themselves against the human body (gravity), (change in tides/atmospheric pressure), etc. and ended with by saying something like most people were controlled completely by external forces. The paper was interesting because he seems to be the first and one of few to actually calculate precisely these changing forces acting on a human being. He did say that he was a Christian - and believed in God. Most people did during his time. It appears that he is advocating determinism in this paper and the one you mentioned - that we are essentially confined to a destiny. Like any great scientist - he was also very interested in why people do things and what not only causes changes in the environment but changes in oneself.

 

"Were it to stop its motion it would die: hatter at rest, if such a thin; could exist, would be matter dead."

 

He is implying that human beings, composing more mass than a single atom, are under the principles that govern the single atom to a lesser extent because they are comprised of many. One of those principles is quoted above- if you stop, you are atrophying. Read more of his papers and you will see him describe similar ideas. He is smart obviously- and remember - there was little science backed psychiatry in his day compared to today - so he was sort of pioneering that, just like most everything else he did.