THE DEFINITIONS OF SCIENCE RE-DEFINED. 249 



The inertia of any mass of matter is thus electrical inertia. 



Current Electricity: Page 186. 



An electrical current is nothing but a series of corpuscles 

 " handed along" from one atom to another through the wire. 

 At the beginning of their course there is a deficiency of 

 corpuscles and the positive electricity of the atoms thus 

 appears. At the end there is a gain in corpuscles and the 

 negative electricity is manifested. 



Electrical Self-induction: Page 181. 



The tendency of corpuscles to maintain their state of 

 motion which we know in matter as inertia is the same 

 tendency expressed as they are handed on through a wire 

 or in the oscillations of an electric spark. Electrical self- 

 induction and the inertia of matter are thus identical 

 phenomena. 



Radiation: Page 186. 



Whenever the velocity of a corpuscle is changed it causes 

 ripples in the surrounding ether. These etherial ripples 

 constitute radiation, whether of light, heat, Hertzian waves 

 or what not. 



Magnetism: Page 186. 



Magnetism is a force developed at right angles to the 

 direction of motion of the moving corpuscle. 



Gravitation: Page 189. 



We do not, as yet, know what gravitation is. Possibly, 

 it depends on some interaction between the positive elec- 

 tricity and the negative electricity of the corpuscles when 

 they come together to form an atom. It is certainly an 

 extremely small effect and is appreciable to us only on ac- 

 count of the enormous masses of the bodies giving rise to it. 



Conservation of Mass: Page 3. 



Is the law of the conservation of mass the expression of 

 an absolute truth? It does not seem so, at any rate in the 



