Hereward Carrington

“ Force cannot originate without an originator. The new discoveries in physics have thrown an entirely different light over this problem, causing us to reconstruct our views as to the nature of matter and energy, and their interrelation. Matter, in fact, has been resolved into energy and springs from it. We have the universe traced back to a homogeneous primal ether in rest. Once this ether receives an initial impulse, then all the rest would follow — etherial vibrations, electric atoms, material atoms, worlds, the universe ! ”

“ It is possible that the gyratory movement of the atoms are communicated to the ether and through it to the different material bodies, thereby establishing an attraction between them. The reciprocal attraction of vortices has, at the present day, been demonstrated by many experiments. . . .Gravitation displays the incomprehensible characteristic, which no other manifestation of energy possesses, of not being arrested by any obstacle. The most delicate researches have shown that no body exists which is opaque to gravitation. ”

“ Gravitation is a very small force if we consider only the action of the masses we have at our disposal, but it is a force extremely great for considerable masses. This power is apparent to us every day in the phenomenon of the tides. ”

“ It might be questioned whether potential energy is energy in the strictest sense of the term, but I shall let that pass for the moment and assume that these facts prove what they are said to prove.
Gravitation is certainly the most mysterious of all known forces, and even yet nothing definite can be said as to its modus operandi. In the case of all other forces known to us it is possible to shut off their influence, to find some body which is opaque to their power. Take, for instance, light and electricity. ”

“ The speed of the propagation of gravitation was estimated by Laplace as being immensely higher than that of light. Henri Poincare considered it as propagated with a velocity of the order of that of light vibration. We do not know how gravitation is propagated, but it seems to me that the law of the inverse square of the distance allows us to imagine gravitic waves having a form analogous to that of the waves of light, electric [456] waves, etc When a force decreases with the distance in accordance with this law, it is legitimate enough to imagine that it is propagated by spherical waves. ”

“ Imagine now any body suspended in the air, or lying on the earth, and the ether, being by the hypothesis grosser in the pores which are in the upper parts of the body than in those which are in the lower parts, and that grosser ether being less apt to be lodged in those pores than the finer ether below, it will endeavor to get out, and give way to the finer ether below, which cannot be, without the bodies descending to make room above for it to go into. ”

“ But as these considerations are purely metaphysical since observation cannot reach beyond the established fact that two confronting bodies gravitate toward each other by virtue of a force to which is given the name of 'attraction,' it appears to me wiser not to advance further to penetrate a mystery which nothing within our knowledge as yet appears able to explain. ”

“ Matter is conceived to be made up, not of an elastic ether and inelastic atoms, but of elastic molecules of different orders as to size and density. If a rough physical conception of these molecules be required, they may be conceived as etherial nuclei, the ether of the nuclei of a lower, being made up of nuclei of a higher, order, and so on ad infinitum. ”

“ Leonard Euler, a Swiss mathematician and philosopher, published in 1760 a treatise in which he commented on the action of gravitation as follows :
"Supposing a hole made in the earth through its center; it is [449] clear that a body at the very center must entirely lose its gravity, as it could no longer move in any direction whatever, all gravity tending continually toward the center of the earth. Since then a body has no longer gravity at the center of the earth, it will follow that in descending to this center its gravity would have gradually diminished ”

“ Some scientists indeed suggest to us that the ether has density and no weight, while others say that it has weight and no density ! These are the men, be it observed, who speak somewhat disparagingly of 'purely metaphysical considerations.' They deduce their conclusions from 'experiments.' But are not the definitions purely metaphysical? ”

“ Gravity has no appreciable action on electricity, while it is the sole reason of the laws governing the flow of liquids. Nevertheless, it more nearly resembles electricity than any force we know. As Dr. Le Bon said in his Evolution of Forces: "One gets clearer and clearer glimpses that weight is due to the relations between the ether and matter, connected, doubtless, by lines of force ”

“ The same is true of all other forces with the single exception of gravitation. No body has been found opaque to gravitation. It seems to exert its influence above, below, and equally upon all sides of any object. The introduction of a solid sheet of metal, of glass, or of any substance whatever, seems to have no appreciable effect. The body beneath which it is introduced seems to be attracted to the earth by gravitation just as strongly as it was before the introduction of such a sheet. ”

“ It is evident, then, that neither the intensity nor the direction of gravity is a consequence from the nature of any body, as not only its intensity is variable but likewise its direction, which on passing to the antipodes becomes quite contrary. ”

“ Roughly speaking, glass permits the passage through it of light rays but prevents the passage of electric rays. Steel on the contrary, being a good conductor, permits the passage through it of the electric current but is impervious to light. ”

“ Glennie postulated a universal repulsion, varying through various intensities, instead of universal attraction; but, could it be discussed in detail, it must be said that his theory completely fails to be convincing.
Keller in 1863, Tait in 1864, and Saigey in 1866, all offered speculations upon this subject, based more or less on their theory of force. Saigey went so far as to say that bodies do not owe their gravity to an intrinsic force, but to the pressure of the medium in which they are immersed. Why this pressure should vary at various points in the universe is not stated. ”

“ Arago, in his Popular Astronomy, attempted to show that gravitation traveled [448] with fifty million times the velocity of light, and that the time required to reach us from the nearest star would be about two seconds. Philippe Villemot, a French doctor of theology and a distinguished mathematician, advanced a theory in 1707 that gravitation is occasioned by a difference of pressure on the outer and inner faces of the fluid constituting the solar vortex, owing to an increase of its density outward from the sun. ”

“ Doubtless, it is not impossible that it may hereafter be discovered that attraction in its turn is only a consequence of a more general law, comprehending in itself more implicitly the means of explaining the effects attributed to attraction .... ”

“ On the other hand, two bodies ought to advance towards each other since they would form a mutual screen, as their opposed surfaces would no longer be hit by the ultra-mundane corpuscles in the direction of the line joining them, and there would then exist currents whose effect would no longer be neutralized by opposite currents. ”

“ The next speculations of note are those by Seguin, submitted to the French Academy of Sciences in 1848 and 1858. In his earlier writings he held to a crude kinetic theory, founded upon the laws of cohesion, repulsion, attraction, etc. In 1858, however, Seguin published in the Cosmos a somewhat elaborate essay on the origin and propagation of force, in which he seems to have abandoned the kinetic theory of gravitation. It is true that he there holds that " matter is inert ”