KINETIC OR MECHANICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 67 



Continental philosophers, following Coulomb, tried to put 

 into mathematical language the action at measurable dis- 

 tances of magnetic masses and elements of electrical 

 circuits,^ Faraday fastened upon tlie pecuUar lines in 

 which iron tilings arranged themselves in the neighbour- 



by a kind of intuition with iu.slinc- 

 tive certiiinty. I would not de- 

 preciate Faraday's contemporaries 

 because they did not see this. I 

 know myself too well how often I 

 sat hopeless, gazing at one of his 

 descriptions of lines of force with 

 their numbers and tension, or look- 

 ing for the meaning of statements 

 where the galvanic current is re- 

 garded as an axis of force and much 

 the like" (p. 277). Rosenberger 

 tells us that it may be in part attrib- 

 uted to the displeasure and annoy- 

 ance with which foreign philoso- 

 phers received l<araday's theoretical 

 views, that Poggendortf, who printed 

 Faraday's earlier memoirs in extenso 

 in his ' Annalen,' only gave a short 

 abstract of the later series. See 

 Rosenberger, ' Die moderne Ent- 

 wickelung der elektrischen Princi- 

 pien,' Leipzig, 1898, p. 105. 



' These researches, of which the 

 fourth chapter of this work gave 

 some account, and which culminated 

 in Weber's well-known law of electro- 

 dynamic action of electrical particles 

 at a distance, absorbed almo^^t ex- 

 clusively the attention of natural 

 philosophers abroad. Mathema- 

 ticians of the highest rank, such 

 as Laplace, Gauss, and Riemann, 

 worked at the subject. It is, how- 

 ever, interesting to note that Gauss, 

 with that remarkable instinct for 

 physical adaptation of mathematical 

 ideas which characterised also the 

 magnetic researches which he 

 carried on between 1830 and 1840, 

 refrained from the development of 

 a mathematical theory of electro- 

 dynamic action for reasons which 

 he later explained to Weber. When 



the latter prepared for publication 

 that elaborate series of exact mea- 

 surements which, irrespective of the 

 theory attached to them, formed 

 the foundation of modern electrical 

 science and of the correlation of the 

 phenomena of magnetism, of elec- 

 tricity at rest and in motion, of 

 induction and of diamagnetism, 

 Gauss wrote as follows under date 

 19th March 1845: "The subject 

 belongs to those investigations 

 which occupied me very extensively 

 about ten years ago (especially 

 1834-36). . . . Perhaps I may be 

 able to think myself again into these 

 matters, which have now become so 

 foreign to me. ... I should no 

 doubt have long ago published my 

 researches ; but at the time when 

 I broke them off, that was want- 

 ing which 1 then considered to 

 be the very keystone — nil actum 

 reputans si quid superesset agen- 

 dum — namely, the deduction of the 

 additional forces (which have to be 

 added on to the mutual action of 

 particles of electricity at rest, if 

 they are in relative motion) from 

 action, not instantaneous, but 

 (like that of light) projjagated in 

 time. With this I could not suc- 

 ceed at the moment, but so far 

 as I can remember I left the subject 

 not entirely without hope that this 

 might later be possible; yet, if I re- 

 member aright, with the subject- 

 ive conviction that it would previ- 

 ously be necessary to form for one- 

 self a workable representation (cine 

 construirbarc Vorstcl/uiig) of the 

 manner in which the jn-opagatiou 

 takes place " ((iauss, ' Werke,' vol. 

 v. p. 627, &c.) 



