SCIENTIFIC MEMOIRS. 
VOL. I1I.—PART X. 
ARTICLE VII. 
General Propositions relating to Attractive and Repulsive Forces 
acting in the inverse ratio of the syuare of the distance. By 
C. F. Gauss. 
[From the Resultate aus den Beobachtungen des magnetischen Vereins im Jahre 
1839. Leipsic, 1840.] 
i 
NATURE presents to us many phznomena which we explain 
by the assumption of forces exerted by the ultimate particles 
of substances upon each other, acting in inverse proportion to 
the squares of their distance apart. 
_ Amongst these forces, the first to be noticed is that of uni- 
versal gravitation, by virtue of which every material molecule uz 
exercises upon every other such molecule «, a moving force, 
which, if we call the distance 7, is expressed by ee and 
_tends to produce the approximation of the molecules in the 
direction of the straight line connecting them. 
If, in order to explain magnetic phenomena, we assume two 
magnetic fluids, one positive and the other negative, two mag- 
netic elements «, ~,, will exert, each on the other, a moving 
force = acting along the straight line which joins the two 
elements, repulsively if » and », are of the same kind of fluid, 
| attractively if they are of different kinds. 
The same is true of the mutual action of the particles of 
electric fluids upon each other. The linear element ds of a 
galvanic current exerts in like manner on an element of the 
magnetic fluid » a moving force, which is inversely propor- 
tional to the square of the distance r; but there is now intro- 
VOL. Ill. PART X. M 
