Page:The principle of relativity (1920).djvu/167

 of the bodies under consideration. They take the place of the imaginary cause R_{1}. Among all the conceivable spaces R_{1} and R_{2} moving in any manner relative to one another, there is a priori, no one set which can be regarded as affording greater advantages, against which the objection which was already raised from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge cannot be again revived. The laws of physics must be so constituted that they should remain valid for any system of co-ordinates moving in any manner. We thus arrive at an extension of the relativity postulate.

Besides this momentous episteomological argument, there is also a well-known physical fact which speaks in favour of an extension of the relativity theory. Let there be a Galiliean co-ordinate system K relative to which (at least in the four-dimensional region considered) a mass at a sufficient distance from other masses move uniformly in a line. Let K´ be a second co-ordinate system which has a uniformly accelerated motion relative to K. Relative to K´ any mass at a sufficiently great distance experiences an accelerated motion such that its acceleration and the direction of acceleration is independent of its material composition and its physical conditions.

Can any observer, at rest relative to K´, then conclude that he is in an actually accelerated reference-system? This is to be answered in the negative; the above-named behaviour of the freely moving masses relative to K´ can be explained in as good a manner in the following way. The reference-system K´ has no acceleration. In the space-*time region considered there is a gravitation-field which generates the accelerated motion relative to K´.

This conception is feasible, because to us the experience of the existence of a field of force (namely the gravitation field) has shown that it possesses the remarkable property of imparting the same acceleration to all bodies. The