William Bower Taylor

“ Ever since the grand demonstration by Newton in 1682, that the moon is a falling body, observing precisely the same law of decline from a rectilinear path as the cannon-ball, and that it is therefore under the dominion of the same force, an eager and unceasing desire has been manifested to discover an antecedent or origin of this universal tendency of matter. ”

“ Is not this medium much rarer within the dense bodies of the sun, stars, planets, and comets, than in the empty celestial spaces between them ? And in passing from them to greater distances, doth it not grow denser and denser perpetually, and thereby cause the gravity of those great bodies toward one another, and of their parts toward bodies ', every body endeavoring to go from the denser parts of the medium toward the rarer ? ”

“ Two plates of metal which cohere enough to support each other in the open air will often separate in a vacuum. But all suppositions founded on these analogies must be considered as merely conjectural ; and our knowledge of every thing which relates to the intimate constitution of matter, partly from the intricacy of the subject, and partly for want of sufficient experiments, is at present in a state of great uncertainty and imperfection. ”

“ Have not the small particles of bodies certain powers, virtues, or forces, by which they act at a distance? .... What I call 'attraction' may be performed by impulse, or by some other means unknown to me. I use that word here to signify only in general any force by which bodies tend toward one another, whatsoever be the cause. ”

“ It must be remembered that the difference of its pressure is not to be estimated from the actual bulk of the earth or any planet alone, but from the effect of the sphere of repulsion of which that planet is the center ; and we may then deduce the force of gravitation from a medium of no very enormous elasticity. ”

“ In the second place, it is to be supposed that the aether is a vibrating medium like air, only the vibrations far more swift and minute; those of air made by a man's ordinary voice succeeding one another at more than half a foot or a foot distance, but those of aether at a less distance than the hundred-thousandth of an inch. ”

“ 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 aether being less apt to be lodged in those pores than the finer aether below, it will endeavor to get out, and give way to the finer a3ther below, which cannot be without the bodies descending to make room above for it to go into. ”