162 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



cording to certain laws ; but whether this agent be material or immaterial he 

 leaves to the consideration of his readers. This is the onward-looking thought 

 of one who, by his knowledge and like quality of mind, saw hi the diamond 

 an unctuous substance coagulated when as yet it was known but as a trans- 

 parent stone, and foretold the presence of a combustible substance in water a 

 century before water was decomposed or hydrogen discovered ; and I can not 

 help believing that the time is near at hand when his thought regarding gravity 

 will produce fruit ; and, with that impression, I shall venture a few considera- 

 tions upon what appears to me the insufficiency of the usually accepted no- 

 tions of gravity and of those forces generally which are supposed to act at a 

 distance, having respect to the modern and philosophic view of the conserva- 

 tion and indestructibility of force. 



The notion of the gravitating force is, with those who admit Newton's law, 

 but go with him no further, that matter attracts matter with a strength which 

 is inversely as the square of the distance. Consider then a mass of matter 

 (or a particle), for which present purpose the sun will serve, and consider a 

 globe like one of the planets, as our earth, either created or taken from distant 

 space and placed near the sun as our earth is ; the attraction of gravity is 

 then exerted, and we say that the sun attracts the earth, and, also, that the 

 earth attracts the sun. But if the sun attracts the earth, that force of attrac- 

 tion may either arise because of the presence of the earth near the sun, or it 

 must have pre-existed in the sun when the earth was not there. If we con- 

 sider the first case, I think it will be exceedingly difficult to conceive that the 

 sudden presence of our earth, ninety-five millions of miles from the sun, and 

 having no previous physical connection with it, nor any previous physical con- 

 nection caused by the mere circumstance of juxtaposition, should be able to 

 raise up in the sun a power having no previous existence. As respects gravity, 

 the earth must be considered as inert, previously, as the sun, and can have no 

 more inducing or affecting power over the sun than the sun over it. Both 

 are assumed to be without power in the beginning of the case ; how then 

 can that power arise by their mere approximation or co-existence ? That a 

 body without force should raise up force in a body at a distance from it, is 

 too hard to imagine ; but it is harder still, if that can be possible, to accept 

 the idea when we consider that it includes the creation of force. Force may 

 be opposed by force, may be diverted, directed partially or exclusively, may 

 even be converted, as far as we understand the matter, disappearing in one 

 form to unite in another ; but it can not be created or annihilated, or even 

 suspended, i. e., rendered existent without action, or without its equivalent 

 action. The conservatism of power is now a thought deeply impressed upon 

 the minds of philosophic men ; and I think that, as a body, they admit that 

 the creation or annihilation of force is equally impossible with the creation or 

 annihilation of matter. But if we conceive the sun existing alone in space, 

 exerting no force of gravitation exterior to it, and then conceive another 

 sphere in space, having like conditions, and that the two are brought toward 

 each other ; if we assume that by their mutual presence each causes the other 

 to act, this is to assume not merely a creation of power, but a double creation, 

 or both are supposed to arise from a previously inert to a powerful state. On 



