THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 



231 



magnetic phenomena novel conceptions, the value of 

 which other fifty years have hardly sufficed to realise 

 is, indeed, an extraordinary fact well worthy of careful 

 examination. Certainly the language in which Cuvier 

 with truth congratulates the French nation on the pre- 

 eminence which it has attained in all branches of science 

 contrasts strangely with the repeated attacks made in 

 periodical literature, and in special pamphlets, on the 

 state of science in England. And these not by persons 

 ignorant of the great names and signal achievements just 

 mentioned, but by men of note, occupying all but the 

 very first places among the scientific men of this country. 



It will suffice to give only two out of many examples 

 of this criticism. 



One of the earliest complaints regarding the culture of 

 higher mathematics in this country will be found in an 



5. 



Criticisms 

 of Playfair. 



at Nottingham by private subscrip- 

 tion in 1828. The term "potential 

 function," to denote the sum (V) 

 obtained by adding together the 

 masses of all the particles of a 

 system, each divided by its distance 

 from a given point, or in mathe- 

 matical language V= I , occurs 



there for the first time. See 

 Oreen's mathematical papers, ed. 

 Ferrers, 1871, p. 22. The function 

 had before that time been used by 

 Legendre and Laplace, but Green 

 was the first to give a general 

 mathematical theory of it. His 

 essay remained unknown to the 

 mathematical world, and the prin- 

 cipal theorems were independently 

 published by Gauss in his celebrated 

 essay ' Allgemeine Lehrsiitze iiber 

 die im verkehrten Verhiiltnisse des 

 Quadrats der Entfernung wirken- 

 den Anziehungs- und Abstossungs- 

 Kriifte,' 1839. 



2. W. Rowan Hamilton's memoirs 

 in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' 

 of 1834 and 1835, preceded by his 

 theory of systems of rays in the 

 'Transactions of the Royal Irish 

 Academy,' 1828. In these papers 

 is contained his celebrated prin- 

 ciple of varying action, which is a 

 development of Maupertuis's prin- 

 ciple of least or stationary ac- 

 tion. A great deal has been written 

 on this principle, which is now con- 

 sidered to be the most general 

 principle of dynamics, as well for 

 its mathematical usefulness in cal- 

 culations (see Kirchhoff, ' Vorlesun- 

 gen iiber mathematische Physik,' 

 vol. i. pp. 28, 29), as from a phy- 

 sical point of view (Helmholtz, 

 in 'Journal fur Mathematik,' vol. 

 100). It has gained this import- 

 ance since the conception of energy, 

 or power to do work, has been 

 placed at the base of the theory 

 of all physical processes. 



