Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/463

448 the two particles A and B as attracting each other by the force of gravitation, under another view. According to the definition, the force depends upon both particles, and if the particle A or B were by itself, it could not gravitate, i. e. it could have no attraction, no force of gravity. Supposing A to exist in that isolated state and without gravitating force, and then B placed in relation to it, gravitation comes on, as is supposed, on the part of both. Now, without trying to imagine how B, which had no gravitating force, can raise up gravitating force in A, and how A, equally without force beforehand, can raise up force in B, still, to imagine it as a fact done, is to admit a creation of force in both particles, and so to bring ourselves within the impossible consequences which have already been referred to.

It may be said we cannot have an idea of one particle by itself, and so the reasoning fails. For my part I can comprehend a particle by itself just as easily as many particles; and though I cannot conceive the relation of a lone particle to gravitation, according to the limited view which is at present taken of that force, I can conceive its relation to something which causes gravitation, and with which, whether the particle is alone, or one of a universe of other particles, it is always related. But the reasoning upon a lone particle does not fail; for as the particles can be separated, we can easily conceive of the particle B being removed to an infinite distance from A and then the power in A will be infinitely diminished. Such removal of B will be as if it were annihilated in regard to A, and the force in A will be annihilated at the same time: so that the case of a lone particle, and that where different distances only are considered, become one, being identical with each other in their consequences. And as removal of B to an infinite distance is as regards A annihilation of B, so removal to the smallest degree is, in principle, the same thing with displacement through infinite space: the smallest increase in distance involves annihilation of power; the annihilation of the second particle, so as to have A alone, involves no other consequence in relation to gravity; there is difference in degree, but no difference in the character of the result.

It seems hardly necessary to observe, that the same line of thought grows up in the mind if we consider the mutual