THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 35 



heat without electricity and magnetism, and that 

 where there is electricity and magnetism there is 

 heat. It also accounts for the apparently occasional 

 character of electricity and magnetism, on which 

 subjects much has to be said later on. 



* Gravitation, as conceived in the Newtonian philosophy, 

 does not exist in its entirety it is, in that sense, 

 imaginary and fallacious; but, as the force that keeps 

 the planets in their orbits is centripetal, the mathe- 

 matical problems stand. So for the future you may 

 trust Newton's mathematics, but not his philosophy. 

 Objects vorticate towards the earth as a result of 

 the action of the ether, while they gravitate to it, as 

 a result of that action, in a somewhat similar manner 

 to the way in which a piece of wood floating in the 

 water may be said to gravitate towards the shore by 

 the action of the incoming tide. The gravitation is 

 caused by the vortication. 



Take a bar magnet, and break it as often as you 

 will, the portions are still magnetic, leading to the 



* By the Newtonian I mean that philosophy that starting from a 

 state of rest imagines the motion of matter to have been caused by the 

 mutual attractions of its smallest portions. Newton erred in making 

 his idea of gravitation inclusive and universal, had he confined it to 

 the action of matter from the combined stage to larger masses, and 

 explained that it was caused by vortication, his philosophy would have 

 been sound. 



" Huygens, who above all other men was qualified to appreciate 

 Newton's philosophy, rejected the doctrine of gravitation as existing 

 between the individual particles of matter, and received it only as an 

 attribute of the planetary masses." Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, 

 by Sir David Brevvster. If by particles Huygens meant the smallest 

 portions of matter, he was correct in his idea, although using an incorrect 

 word. 



