384 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



vious experience of his own muscles bad enabled our early 

 inquirer to distinguish between a push and a pull. 

 Augmented experience sbowed him that in the case of 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, concep- 

 tions 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. Gilbert, a man 

 probably of firmer scientific fiber, and of finer insight, 

 than Bacon himself. Gilbert proved that a multitude of 

 other bodies, when rubbed, exerted the power which, thou- 

 sands of years previously, had been observed in amber. In 

 this way the notion of attraction and repulsion in external 

 nature was rendered familiar. It was a matter of experi- 

 ence that bodies, between which no visible link or connec- 

 tion 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 something 

 finer than mere experience. Experience furnishes the soil 

 for plants of higher growth; and this observation of action 

 at a distance provided material for speculation upon the 

 largest of problems. Bodies were observed to fall to the 

 earth. Why should they do so? The earth was proved to 

 revolve round the sun; and the rnoon 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, as a boy twirls round his head a bullet 

 at the end of a string. But why should the chain be 

 needed? It is a fact of experience that bodies can attract 

 each other at a distance, without the intervention of any 

 chain. Why should not the sun and earth so attract each 

 other? and why should not the fall of bodies from a height 

 be the result of their attraction by the earth? Here then 

 we reach one of those higher speculations which grow out 

 of the fruitful soil of observation. Having started with 



