KINETIC OR MECHANICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 77 



so the rays of electric and magnetic force seen by Faraday 

 in the abstraction of his intuitive mind became a reality 

 for every experimentalist when Hertz in 1888 actually 

 showed the wonderful action of electric waves at a dis- 

 tance. Atoms and lines of force have become a practical 

 shall I say a popular ? reality, whereas they were once 

 only the convenient method of a single original mind for 

 gathering together and unifying in thought a bewildering 

 mass of observed phenomena, or at most capable of being 

 utilised for a mathematical description and calculation of 

 actual effects. 



For a quarter of a century after Faraday had conceived 

 the notion of looking upon electric and magnetic 

 phenomena as depending on a property belonging to 

 all matter, and pervading all space, like radiation and 

 gravity, the only natural philosopher who to any extent 

 entered into his ideas was Thomson. Even Tyndall, who 

 came more than any other prominent physicist under 

 Faraday's immediate and personal influence, and contrib- 

 uted largely to our knowledge of the new phenomena 

 discovered by his great master, does not seem to have 

 assimilated his scientific language and reasoning. It 

 required a mathematical mind really to grasp and put 

 into form Faraday's notions. Encouraged by Thomson, 

 and soon after the publication of Thomson's mathe- 

 matical theory of magnetism, Clerk Maxwell devoted 

 himself to a theoretical study of electricity and allied 

 subjects, a field which Thomson had then almost mon- 

 opolised in this country. 1 The first of Maxwell's revolu- 



1 See Professor Glazebrook's little " Century Science Series," 1901. 

 book on ' James Clerk Maxwell and On page 42 a letter of Maxwell is 

 Modern Physics,' published in the quoted, in which he speaks of 



