66 From Matter to Man. 



their own times to establish a universal law of 

 magnetism then, and too ignorant of to-day data to 

 frame a universal law of magnetism acceptable now. 

 Yet their speculations, like those of all earnest 

 thinkers, were straws showing the current of human 

 intelligence, indicating the poles of contemporary 

 human thought, and clearly pointing out to their 

 successors the path where the pioneers of progress 

 ought to labour. But, as at many another crisis in 

 human intelligence, when the lamps went out, men 

 only lapsed deeper into darkness instead of soaring 

 into light. 



The claim of magnetism to be the chief force of 

 nature or the dominating constituent of energy is 

 thus of no mushroom growth. The contention has 

 been simmering in the minds of able observers for 

 centuries ; it appears, in a more or less vague form in 

 all the writings and speculations of present day 

 scientists, and was even openly advocated by a 

 French philosopher over twenty years ago.* Hence 

 if truth lurks in it at all, the probability of its 

 satisfying human aspirations now for a universal law 

 is greater than ever before. Still, notwithstanding 

 the great importance of magnetism, we cannot assert 

 its absolute pre-eminence, for the other modes and 

 constituents of energy are so interchangeable with 

 it and with each other (as the law of the Correlation 

 of Physical Forces affirms), that all must be included 

 in nature's energial sovereignty. 



* M. Lefevre's Philosophy, Eng. Trans., p. 453. 



