Secondary Laws. 93 



hypothetical law, centrifugal force, or " primitive im- 

 pulsion in the direction of the tangent " — a law of 

 which he knew even less than of gravitation ; in fact, 

 of which he knew nothing save that all sidereal bodies 

 had an unaccountable onward motion. Whatever, 

 therefore, this initial motion was or is, it has an equal, 

 if not a prior, claim to so-called centripetal motion, to 

 the honour of wheeling the planets in their orbits — a 

 deduction overlooked or ignored. 



In awarding to the proper source reparation for 

 this oversight, we note that centrifugal motion is 

 obviously the effect of a repulsive force, and centri- 

 petal motion the effect of an attractive force ; hence, 

 the planets are virtually kept in their orbits by the 

 dual play of opposite yet related forces. When, 

 moreover, it is acknowledged that the sun and planets 

 are magnets with poles and polarity, we are warranted 

 in deducing that it only needs a thorough knowledge 

 of planetary motions and polarities to bring about 

 the complete subserviency of all solar and sidereal 

 motions to a more efficient law than gravitation — to, 

 in fact, its parent law, polarity and its correlatives.* 



(e) Hypothesis of an Origin to Gravitation and the 

 Causes of the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies. 



Although we cannot conceive of an absolute origin 

 to matter either in motion or at rest, because the con- 



* As indicating the tendency of present scientific thought, a paper 

 was read before the Edinburgh Association of Science and Art, 

 "attacking the Newtonian theory of gravitation, and supporting the 

 view that the motions of the planets were caused by electricity generated 

 in the sun." Scotsman, 3rd March 1896. 



