62 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



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the magnet and the amber, pulls and pushes — ^attractions 

 and repulsions — were also exerted; and, by a kind of 

 poetic transfer, he applied to things external to himself 

 conceptions derived from himself. The magnet and the 

 rubbed amber were credited with pushing and pulling, 

 or, in other words, with exerting force. 



In the time of the great Lord Bacon the margin of 

 these pushes and pulls was vastly extended by Dr. Gil- 

 bert, a man probably of firmer scientific fibre, and of finer 

 insight, than Bacon himself. Gilbert proved that a mul- 

 titude of other bodies, when rubbed, exerted the power 

 which, thousands of years previously, had been observed 

 in amber. In this way the notion of attraction and re- 

 pulsion in external nature was rendered familiar. It was 

 a matter of experience that bodies, between which no 

 visible link or connection existed, possessed the power 

 of acting upon each other; and the action came to be 

 technically called '* action at a distance." 



But out of experience in science there grows some- 

 thing finer than mere experience. Experience furnishes 

 the soil for plants of higher growth; and this observa- 

 tion of action at a distance provided material for specu- 

 lation upon the largest of problems. Bodies were ob- 

 served to fall to the earth. Why should they do so? 

 The earth was proved to revolve round the sun; and 

 the moon to revolve round the earth. Why should they 

 do so? What prevents them from flying straight off 

 into space? Supposing it were ascertained that from a 

 part of the earth's rocky crust a firmly fixed and tightly 

 stretched chain started toward the sun, we might be 

 inclined to conclude that the earth is held in its orbit 

 by the chain — that the sun twirls the earth around him, 



