Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/466

1857.] of matter merely, but conjointly in them, and all space. I I have already put forth considerations regarding gravity which partake of this idea, and it seems to have been unhesitatingly accepted by Newton.

There is one wonderful condition of matter, perhaps its only true indication, namely inertia; but in relation to the ordinary definition of gravity, it only adds to the difficulty. For if we consider two particles of matter at a certain distance apart, attracting each other under the power of gravity and free to approach, they will approach; and when at only half the distance, each will have had stored up in it, because of its inertia, a certain amount of mechanical force. This must be due to the force exerted, and, if the conservation principle be true, must have consumed an equivalent proportion of the cause of attraction; and yet, according to the definition of gravity, the attractive force is not diminished thereby, but increased fourfold, the force growing up within itself the more rapidly, the more it is occupied in producing other force. On the other hand, if mechanical force from without be used to separate the particles to twice their distance, this force is not stored up in momentum or by inertia, but disappears; and three-fourths of the attractive force at the first distance disappears with it: how can this be?

We know not the physical condition or action from which inertia results; but inertia is always a pure case of the conservation of force. It has a strict relation to gravity, as appears by the proportionate amount of force which gravity can communicate to the inert body; but it appears to have the same strict relation to other forces acting at a distance, as those of magnetism or electricity, when they are so applied by the