92 From Matter to Man. 



Gravitation, as an assumed law of indiscriminate 

 attraction, thus merges into the more verified laws 

 of discriminate attraction, as exemplified in the pre- 

 ceding primary laws of energy. 



(&) The Mathematical Law of Gravitation : 



" Every particle of matter in the universe attracts 

 eveiy other particle with a force whose direction is that 

 of a line joining the two, and whose magnitude is 

 directly as the product of the masses, and inversely as 

 the square of their distance from one another" 



Gravitation, as so defined, contains no fundamental 

 principle, for, as Huxley well observes, the so-called 

 law of gravitation is not a cause, but a mere statement 

 of how bodies approach one another, not why they do 

 so.* Professor Tait also admits that " the cause of 

 gravitation remains undiscovered." 



When Newton conceived the bold scheme of gird- 

 ling the solar and sidereal worlds into one vast 

 mechanism by the assumed omnipotent law of 

 gravitation, his theory, at best, was a half measure ; 

 his power only a drag, not an energy ; a tie, not a 

 cause of motion. Planets were regarded by him as 

 aerial horses that required to be reined in. Thus the 

 vocation of gravitation was merely to bind the planets, 

 as with a chain, in their orbits at specific distances 

 from their foci, in order to prevent them from rushing 

 out of the solar system on the impulse of another 



* Science Primer, p. 25. Commenting on this in a College Lecture, 

 Professor Crum Brown, Edinburgh, aptly said, " A statement cannot 

 do anything," 



