202 JAMES CLEKK MAXWELL 



CHAPTER X. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MAXWKLI/S TI1EOKY. 



WE have endeavoured in the preceding pages to give 

 somo account of Maxwell's contributions to electrical 

 theory and the physics of the ether. Wo must now 

 consider very briefly what evidence there is to support 

 these views. At Maxwell's death such evidence, 

 though strong, was indirect. His supporters were 

 limited to some few English-speaking pupils, young 

 and enthusiastic, who were convinced, it may be, in 

 no small measure, by the atlection and reverence with 

 which they regarded their master. Abroad his views 

 had made very little way. 



In the last words of his book ho writes, speaking 

 of various distinguished workers 



"There ap]>ears to he in the minds of these eminent men 

 some prejudice, or a priori objection, against the hyi>othesis of 

 a medium in which the phenomena of radiation of light and 

 heat, and the electric actions at a distance, take place. It is 

 true that, at one time, those who speculated as to the causes of 

 physical phenomena were in the habit of accounting for each 

 kind of action at a distance by means of a special wtherial 

 fluid, -whose function and property it was to produce theso 

 actions. They tilled all space three and four times over with 

 juthers of different kinds, the properties of which were in. 

 vented merely to 'save appearance*/ so that more rational 

 enquirers were willing rather to accept not only Newton's 

 definite law of attraction at a distance, but even the dogma of 

 Cotes,* that action at a distance is one of the primary pro- 

 lerties of matter, and that no explanation can be more intel- 

 ligible than this fact. Hence the undulatory theory of light 

 Preface to Newton's " i'rineij'ia," 2nd edition. 



