THE ASTRONOMICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 367 



electric circuits the phenomena of electro-magnetism, 

 diamagnetism, and induction were all resolved into 

 elementary processes of attraction and repulsion, and 

 summed up in a formula which looked like an extension 

 of the Newtonian gravitation formula, revealing the 

 mysterious influence of molecular forces. 



" Oersted had found that an electric current acts on a 

 magnetic pole, but that it neither attracts it nor repels it, 

 but causes it to move round the current. He expressed 

 this by saying that the electric conflict acts in a revolving 

 manner. The most obvious deduction from this new fact 

 was, that the action of the current on the magnet is not 

 a push-and-pull force, but a rotary force, and accordingly 

 many minds began to speculate on vortices and streams 

 of ether, whirling round the current. But Ampere, by a 

 combination of mathematical skill and experimental in- 

 genuity, first proved that two electric currents act on one 

 another, and then analysed this action into the resultant 

 of a system of push-and-pull forces between the elemen- 

 tary parts of these currents." ^ 



Weber in Germany took up the work where Ampere 

 had left it.^ One of his objects was to combine the 



1 Clerk Maxwell " On Action at 

 a Distance" ('Scientific Papers,' 

 vol. ii. p. 317). 



- Weber's interest was twofold. 

 The primary object was to put 

 accurate quantitative data in the 

 place of merely qualitative descrip- 

 tions or mere estimates of pheno- 

 mena. He had then already pub- 

 lished, together with his brothers 

 (see supra, p. 196, note 3), two 

 works in which in a similar way 

 exact research has taken the place 

 of inexact description. The first 



was his experimental investigation 

 of wave-motion ('Die Wellenlehre 

 auf Experimente gegriindet,' 1825), 

 the other the still more delicate at- 

 tempt to treat a physiological pheno- 

 menon, tlie mechanism of the organs 

 of locomotion, on exact mechanical 

 principles (1836). This rare gift of 

 exactness, invaluable at all times, 

 but almost unique at that time in 

 Germany, where philosophical vague- 

 ness was only too common, attract- 

 ed the notice of Gauss, who brought 

 Weber to Gottingen in 1830 after 



