Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/55

Rh the table], they do not attract each other at all. It is that [the magnet] which makes them hold together. Now, just as these iron particles hold together in the form of an elliptical bridge, so do the different particles of iron which constitute this nail hold together and make it one. And here is a bar of iron—why, it is only because the different parts of this iron are so wrought as to keep close together by the attraction between the particles that it is held together in one mass. It is kept together, in fact, merely by the attraction of one particle to another, and that is the point I want now to illustrate. If I take a piece of flint and strike it with a hammer, and break it thus [breaking off a piece of the flint], I have done nothing more than separate the particles which compose these two pieces so far apart, that their attraction is too weak to cause them to hold together, and it is only for that reason that there are now two pieces in the place of one. I will shew you an experiment to prove that this attraction does still exist in those particles, for here is a piece of glass (for what was true of the flint and the bar of iron is true of the piece of glass, and is true of