§ 115. In common with the general truths set forth in preceding chapters, the instability of the homogeneous is demonstrable _à priori_. It, like each of them, is a corollary from the persistence of force. Already this has been tacitly implied by assigning unlikeness in the exposure of its part to surrounding agencies, as the reason why a uniform mass loses its uniformity. But here it will be proper to expand this tacit implication into definite proof. On striking a mass of matter with such force as either to indent it or make it fly to pieces, we see both that the blow affects differently its different parts, and that the differences are consequent on the unlike relations of its parts to the force impressed. The part with which the striking body comes in contact, receiving the whole of the communicated momentum, is driven in towards the centre of the mass. It thus compresses and tends to displace the more centrally situated portions of the mass. These, however, cannot be compressed or thrust out of their places without pressing on all surrounding portions. And when the blow is violent enough to fracture the mass, we see, in the radial dispersion of its fragments, that the original momentum, in being distributed throughout it, has been divided into numerous minor momenta, unlike in their directions. We see that these directions are determined by the positions of the parts with respect to each other, and with respect to the point of impact. We see that the parts are differently affected by the disruptive force, because they are differently related to it in their directions and attachments—that the effects being the joint products of the cause and the conditions, cannot be alike in parts which are differently conditioned. A body on which radiant heat is falling, exemplifies this truth still more clearly. Taking the simplest case (that of a sphere) we see that while the part nearest to the radiating centre receives the rays at right angles, the rays strike the other parts of the exposed side at all angles from 90° down to 0°. Again, the molecular vibrations propagated through the mass from the surface which receives the heat, must proceed inwards at angles differing for each point. Further, the interior parts of the sphere affected by the vibrations proceeding from all points of the heated side, must be dissimilarly affected in proportion as their positions are dissimilar. So that whether they be on the recipient area, in the middle, or at the remote side, the constituent atoms are all thrown into states of vibration more or less unlike each other.