Page:The Meaning of Relativity - Albert Einstein (1922).djvu/76

64 $$K'$$ were unaccelerated. Overlooking for the present the question as to the "cause" of such a gravitational field, which will occupy us later, there is nothing to prevent our conceiving this gravitational field as real, that is, the conception that $$K'$$ is "at rest" and a gravitational field is present we may consider as equivalent to the conception that only $$K$$ is an "allowable" system of co-ordinates and no gravitational field is present. The assumption of the complete physical equivalence of the systems of co- ordinates, $$K$$ and $$K'$$ we call the "principle of equivalence;" this principle is evidently intimately connected with the theorem of the equality between the inert and the gravitational mass, and signifies an extension of the principle of relativity to co-ordinate systems which are in non-uniform motion relatively to each other. In fact, through this conception we arrive at the unity of the nature of inertia and gravitation. For according to our way of looking at it, the same masses may appear to be either under the action of inertia alone (with respect to $$K$$) or under the combined action of inertia and gravitation (with respect to $$K'$$). The possibility of explaining the numerical equality of inertia and gravitation by the unity of their nature gives to the general theory of relativity, according to my conviction, such a superiority over the conceptions of classical mechanics, that all the difficulties encountered in development must be considered as small in comparison.

What justifies us in dispensing with the preference for inertial systems over all other co-ordinate systems, a preference that seems so securely established by