244 E. B. Hunt on the Nature of Forces. 
does it mean when this reception is precluded by the total lack of 
magnitude in atoms? Nothing remains but to conceive the force 
rays or their equivalents from the atoms in B as every where re- 
ceiving the action of the intersecting rays from the atoms in 4, 
and referring these actions back to their own centres. Now un- _ 
less these rays are conceived as possessing magnitude, and as ac- 
tually filling all space, the result of ray-intersections, depending 
as it must on the number of intersections, would not be the ex- 
act Newtonian law, but one essentially departing from this, by a 
difference which increases as the rays from each atom are sup- 
posed less completely to fill all space. Thus to obtain the New- 
tonian law, we appear to be driven again to that strange hypoth- 
esis of each atom filling all space and all atoms coexisting 10 
each point, and to require still other special conditions; all sim- 
ply as a consequence of denying size to atomic nuclei. As the 
power of receptivity must exist either in atoms of finite size or ~ 
in atoms of infinite size, and as we must either locate inertia in 
a nucleal atom or in an infinite one; we seem quite justified in 
preferring emanation from and reception by definite nucleal atoms 
to the bold hypothesis of a static entity, activity and inertia be- 
longing to infinite coexistent atoms. If we attempt to concelve © 
a material mass, as a wall for instance, according to this coexis- 
tence theory, we shall find it signally inadequate to the realiza- 
tion of facts to the mind, which though not a logical objection, 
IS a serious practical drawback. ut by conceiving atoms as 
solid, impenetrable, definite volumes, from which force incessantly 
emanates, and by which force is incessantly received, the mental 
difficulties wane away, and matter becomes to the mind a local- 
ized reality. However small the atomic volumes be assumed, $0 
long as they have a real and finite size, a receptive capacity 
and the Newtonian law result at once. 
If I rightly apprehend Faraday’s views (Phil. Mag., Nos. 157 
and 188), they are such as would give a law quite different from 
' Newton’s. The interactions of rays conditioned as he suppose 
could only give the actual result by so extending the amplitude 
and number of rays as that all points of space should be points of 
interaction between the rays of each atom and of all other atoms 
which is the coexistence theory again. 'T’o deduce the actua 
law from the views so modestly set forth by this excellent inves” 
tigator, would, I think, be a mathematical impossibility ; to S*Y 
nothing of their inadequacy as they now stand, to serve the 
cause of molecular mechanics. The objection to the vieWS 
Boscovich and Faraday on the ground of their not providing for 
inertia has been well urged by Airy (Phil. Mag., No. Je 
There is another signal fault of the Boscovich theory; whi 
at this time is peculiarly objectionable. While its mechanis™ and 
empirically devised with special reference to the solid, liquid 
ch 
is 
