Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/473

458 of these results, if we left any of the others unregarded! That there should be a power of gravitation existing by itself, having no relation to the other natural powers, and no respect to the law of the conservation of force, is as little likely as that there should be a principle of levity as well as of gravity. Gravity may be only the residual part of the other forces of nature, as Mossotti has tried to show; but that it should fall out from the law of all other force, and should be outside the reach either of further experiment or philosophical conclusions, is not probable. So we must strive to learn more of this outstanding power, and endeavour to avoid any definition of it which is incompatible with the principles of force generally, for all the phenomena of nature lead us to believe that the great and governing law is one. I would much rather incline to believe that bodies affecting each other by gravitation act by lines of force of definite amount (somewhat in the manner of magnetic or electric induction, though without polarity), or by an ether pervading all parts of space, than admit that the conservation of force could be dispensed with.

It may be supposed, that one who has little or no mathematical knowledge should hardly assume a right to judge of the subject of these remarks. My apology is this: I do not perceive that a mathematical mind, simply as such, has any advantage over an equally acute mind not mathematical, in perceiving the nature and power of a natural principle of action. It cannot of itself introduce the knowledge of any new principle. Dealing with any and every amount of static electricity, the mathematical mind can, and has balanced and adjusted them with wonderful advantage, and has foretold results which the experimentalist can do no more than verify. But it could not discover dynamic electricity, nor electro-magnetism, nor magneto-electricity, or even suggest them; though when once discovered by the experimentalist, it can take them up with extreme facility. So in respect of the force of gravitation, it has calculated the results of the power in such wonderful manner as to trace the known planets through their courses and perturbations, and in so doing has discovered a planet before unknown; but there may be results of the gravitating force of other kinds than attraction inversely as the square of the