CAUSE OF SOLIDITY. 171 



Surely there are mysteries enough in science, 

 without our going beyond the range of expe- 

 rience and observation. Perhaps the most fruit- 

 ful source of error in physics, has been owing to 

 partial and limited views of nature ; and the con- 

 founding of phenomena or effects with the cause 

 which produces them. Some modern writers on 

 natural philosophy, speak of gravitation as though 

 it were " the animating principle of nature." In 

 the fifth volume of the Cabinet Cyclopedia, we 

 are told that, " all the great changes and revo- 

 lutions of the bodies which compose our system, 

 can be traced to, or derived from this principle." 

 But if gravitation were a universal principle of 

 action in nature, it ought to explain the pheno- 

 mena of solution, repulsion, evaporation, the 

 expansive force of gases and fulminating com- 

 pounds ; in short, it ought to account for all the 

 operations of chemistry, geology, and meteor- 

 ology, which is not the fact. It therefore follows, 

 that there must be a principle of action in nature 

 ulterior to that of gravitation, as admitted by 

 Newton. 



It might as well be said that repulsion is the 

 animating principle of nature, as the general 

 attraction termed gravitation. The true state of 

 the case is, that both attraction and repulsion are 

 subordinate, though universal effects of an all- 

 pervading principle that surrounds every particle 

 of matter in the universe, to which may be 



