MATTER AND FORCE. 57 



In the time of the great Lord Bacon the margin of 

 these pushes and pulls was vastly extended by Dr. 

 Gilbert, a man probably of firmer scientific fibre, and 

 of finer insight, than Bacon himself. Gilbert proved 

 that a multitude of other bodies, when rubbed, exerted 

 the power which, thousands of years previously, had 

 been observed in amber. In this way the notion of 

 attraction and repulsion in external nature was ren- 

 dered familiar. It was a matter of experience that 

 bodies, between which no visible link or connection 

 existed, possessed the power of acting upon each other; 

 and the action came to be technically called * action at 

 a distance.' 



But out of experience in science there grows some- 

 thing finer than mere experience. Experience furnishes 

 the soil for plants of higher growth ; and this observa- 

 tion of action at a distance provided material for 

 speculation upon the largest of problems. Bodies were 

 observed to fall to the earth. Why should they do so ? 

 The earth was proved to revolve round the sun ; and 

 the moon to revolve round the earth. Why should they 

 do so ? What prevents them from flying straight off 

 into space ? Supposing it were ascertained that from 

 a part of the earth's rocky crust a firmly fixed and 

 tightly stretched chain started towards the sun, we 

 might be inclined to conclude that the earth is held in its 

 orbit by the chain that the sun twirls the earth around 

 him, as a boy twirls round his head a bullet at the end 

 of a string. But why should the chain be needed ? 

 It is a fact of experience that bodies can attract each 

 other at a distance, without the intervention of any chain. 

 Why should not the sun and earth so attract each other ? 

 and why should not the fall of bodies from a height be 

 the result of their attraction by the earth ? Here then 

 we reach one of those higher speculations which grow out 



