MAGNETISM. 



energy, the law of inertia, or the law of action 

 and reaction. On the other hand, so far as 

 they can be shown to be of identical nature 

 with phenomena producible in the laboratory 

 under certain conditions and in definite rela- 

 tions to other phenomena, they are material 

 for scientific study, not for a book of paradoxes. 



In electrical study there cannot be para- 

 doxes in our sense. There is in these matters 

 no general body of opinion, expectation, or 

 prejudice, the result of untutored experience, 

 to be apparently contradicted by special cases. 

 If we leave out the modern version of the view 

 that thunderbolts were a kind of javelin hurled 

 by Jupiter, there are no natural views at all, 

 because there is no natural knowledge, on this 

 subject. 



The whole matter, facts and experience, as 

 well as views, expectations, and beliefs, has 

 been scientific from the beginning. Every 

 student of electricity begins and continues the 

 study prepared to believe anything of which 

 he has evidence ; and laymen are by this time 

 well enough acquainted with their own ignor- 

 ance in such matters to accept without ques- 

 tion things accepted by those who know. No 

 civilised man can now witness any electrical 

 experiment with the feelings with which, for 

 the first time (if he has been fortunate enough 

 to grow up without seeing or hearing of it 

 before), he sees a gyroscope supported loosely 



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