Galileo showed, on the contrary, that the nature of motion once impressed is to continue indefinitely in a uniform direction, and that the effect of the medium is a retarding, not an impelling one.
The impelling influences on the French settlement of the region were the love of exploration and adventure, the commercial instinct and religious zeal.
Nor is his theory of the weight essential to atoms as being due to an inner force impelling them to motion in any way reconcilable with his general doctrine of mechanical causes.
That there are defects in the logical process as here outlined to account for the curious rite constitutes no valid objection to the theory advanced, for, in the first place, primitive logic in matters of belief is inherently defective and even contradictory, and, secondly, the strong desire to pierce the mysterious future, forming an impelling factor in all religions - even in the most advanced of our own day - would tend to obscure the weakness of any theory developed to explain a rite which represents merely one endeavour among many to divine the intention and plans of the gods, upon the knowledge of which so much of man's happiness and welfare depended.
The object of this sympathetic resentment, impelling us to punish, is what we call injustice; and thus the remarkable stringency of the obligation to act justly is explained, since the recognition of any action as unjust involves the admission that it may be forcibly obstructed or punished.