240 KINETIC THEORIES OF GRAVITATION. 



directly meeting, would have their motion destroyed, and be reduced 

 to rest ; maintaining that " the idea of the possibility of the destruction 

 of force and of the complete disappearance of motion has always been 

 insuperably repugnant to sound and careful thinkers, who have made 

 this question a subject of study."* 



Notwithstanding all which, he says, in regard to the uniform tendency 

 of a material system to its center of gravity, " we are thus led to con- 

 sider attraction as a fust cause, emanating directly from the Divine Will 

 iu the creation of matter. 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. . . . 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. Let us then consider matter as existing from the beginning 

 uniformly in space, and attraction as an essential property with which 

 it is endowed, by virtue of which the different parts or molecules com- 

 posing it possess in themselves the power of mutual attraction."! 



So explicit a statement would seem quite sufficient to prove that Abbe 

 Moigno has in his zeal transcended the doctrines of the one whom he had 

 effusively recognized as his teacher ; and that whatever may have been 

 the earlier views of Seguin as to the origin of gravitation, he can no 

 linger be numbered with those who conceive it to be " a mode of mo- 

 tion. 7 ' 



Boucheporn. 1849. 



M. F. de Boucheporn read a memoir to the French Academy of Sci- 

 ences, July 30, 1840, entitled u Researches on physical laws considered 

 as consequences of the only essential properties of matter, impenetra- 

 bility and inertia ; " the object proposed being to show the considera- 

 tions leading to the conclusion that all physical law rests simply on 

 these necessary attributes of matter, " without the supposition of any 

 force? 1 



He commences with the general recognition, u It is an idea quite old 

 in science that the movements of the heavenly bodies may be explained 

 by an external impulsion or by the action of a universal fluid. This 

 was the earliest idea of French philosophy, being that of Descartes, 

 and even Newton himself had thought of connecting with it the great 

 law of gravitation." 



Boucheporn proceeds to cite some of the principles and results devel- 

 oped. " 1st. The intensity of an impulse propagated in the setherial 



" ( oxmos, October 15, 1858, vol. xiii, p. 508. 

 Ubidem, pp. 486, 487. 



