ACTION AT A DISTANCE. 435 



had now become reducible to two that there are physical 

 emanations from stone or electric which come into contact, 

 with the attracted body and so move it, or that there are 

 no emanations, no material linkage of any sort, but that 

 either magnet or electric has the capacity of "action at a 

 distance," a term which obviously merely describes with- 

 out explaining. As measuring instruments had increased 

 in numbers, and experimental tests had become more 

 rigorous, so the emanation doctrine had lost ground, for 

 the simple reason that the imagined effluviums refused to 

 reveal themselves, and correspondingly the u action at a 

 distance" notion had gained in favor. Hence it is not 

 uncommon at this time, when Mr. Isaac Newton announces 

 hfs great discovery of universal gravitation, to consider the 

 magnet and electric as possessed of a certain occult capacity 

 for moving far- off objects. In other words, people had be- 

 gun to realize that they did not know anything about the 

 matter, in- which circumstances a little mystery has, in all 

 ages, been regarded as quite human, and not unconducive 

 to the preservation of a proper self-respect. 



When Newton fell into the famous reverie in his garden, 

 the magnetical-cosmical theory which Gilbert had pro- 

 posed had been for some time moribund. The modification 

 of it which Kepler had adopted had preserved its vitality 

 somewhat, although Kepler had used it for little else than 

 a scaffolding. It had not served Gilbert's purposes in lend- 

 ing any material support to the Copernican doctrine now 

 firmly established, and in fact had acted rather to divert 

 attention from the experiments on which it was founded, 

 and so to obscure rather than enhance its author's fame. 

 There was also a strong inclination among English phil- 

 osophers, never stronger than just before Newton's advent, 

 to reject all explanations of the movements of the planets 

 based on analogies and guesses, and in place thereof to 

 regard their motions and relations as consequent upon 

 physical laws, and capable of mathematical determination. 

 Hooke was so far in the van of this thought that when 



