AND ITS SELF-CONSEKVATION. 145 



circumference whose radius is the distance between the 

 centers of the spheres. 



Since, then, each of the bodies or force-centers occu- 

 pies only a small portion of the circumference of the 

 force-sphere into which the other center expands, it is 

 evident that the interaction between the spheres will 

 not only depend upon the distance between the centers, 

 but will conform to the law of the relation between the 

 surfaces of spheres; namely, the law that those sur- 

 faces are to each other as the squares of their radii. 



Of course, then, so far as mere distance is con- 

 sidered as the determining condition, the attraction or 

 repulsion between two force-centers at any given dis- 

 tance will be four times as great, for example, as that 

 between two other equal centers separated from each other 

 by twice that distance. Each force-sphere must, besides, 

 act from its center or focus outward in all directions on 

 all other force-spheres, in accordance with this law. 



Thus we arrive at one of the two fundamental phases 

 of what since Newton's time has been accepted in the 

 scientific world as the universal law of gravitation. 



The other phase, involving mass, however, remains to 

 be accounted for. And here it is to be remembered that 

 force or energy is the substance of things. It has also 

 developed that the action of force must necessarily result 

 in the differentiation of force-spheres at all points 

 throughout space. 



And yet this setting up or development of force- 

 spheres is but the stress of balanced phases of force, 

 which, so far as can be seen from our present stand- 

 point, must, as has been said, prevent instead of pro- 

 ducing motion. In short, upon the pre-supposition of 



