MAGNETIC ATTRACTION. 



a straw : these, and all similar cases, are found 

 on examination to be cases really of circuitous 

 pushing or repulsion, which is allowed to act 

 by the removal of a counterbalancing push in 

 the opposite direction. 



Let us proceed to cases much more dim- 

 cult such cases as that which arouses the 

 keen interest and astonishment of the child- 

 philosopher : the attraction of a toy-swan by 

 a magnet. Is this, in truth, an action of a new 

 kind ? Is it pulling at a distance, or is it, like 

 the pump-suction, really repulsion by a cir- 

 cuitous course ? 



To answer this definitely, as a proved matter, 

 is impossible. Nobody knows, in the case of 

 magnetic attraction, as we do in the case of 

 pump-suction, the exact nature in detail of the 

 mechanical actions at work in the bodies which 

 are the seat of this particular phenomenon. We 

 must resort to considerations of probability from 

 the nature of the case and from analogy. 



We know that in an electro-magnet the mag- 

 netic energy is derived from the electric energy 

 in a wire coiled round the magnet that is, 

 from some special form of vibration in the small 

 particles of the wire. And since the wires do 

 not touch the magnet, are at a distance from 

 it, however small, these vibrations are com- 

 municated by means of some intermediate 

 vibrations set up in the intervening ether. 

 The change, therefore, in the soft iron, which 



189 



