162 BULLETIN OF THE 



for it is demonstrable that the component molecules and atoms of 

 the hardest steel are far from being in contact ; that carbon mol- 

 ecules have room enough — even when crystal-bound in diamond — 

 to freely execute the oscillations constituting its varying tempera- 

 ture by constant exchanges, and to so alter their relative excursions 

 as to represent the changed specific gravity due to varying temper- 

 ature. 



The conclusion reached, we would wish to express in the most 

 emphatic and unequivocal terms : — that in all nature we have as 

 yet been furnished with no example of absolute contact action ; — 

 that " action at no distance " is sheer physical impossibility; — that 

 in utter scorn of venerable scholastic axioms, matter is forever in- 

 capable of influencing other matter in any manner whatever or in 

 any degree whatever — excepting " where it is not !" And thus the 

 paradox of Zeno receives its solution by the thorough confutation 

 of kinematism at every point — inductive or deductive, — theoretical 

 or experimental. 



" Occult Qualities." — And now we are fully prepared to encounter 

 the portentous arraignment of having recourse to the witch-craft 

 of magical virtues and to the mystery of " occult qualities." What 

 then is the precise import of this supposed obnoxious epithet occult 

 as applied to material property or quality ? A property whose ex- 

 istence is once clearly demonstrated, can scarcely with propriety be 

 characterized as bidden, unknown, or undiscovered.* Rather are 



Ivory. (Encyclopced. Brit. 8th ed : vol. iv, p. 220.) The case of simple 

 traction by a "solid" metallic rod can be explained oidy — (as J. Clerk 

 Maxwell has well stated) — "by the existence of internal forces in its 

 substance" or "between the particles of which the rod is composed, that 

 is between bodies at distances which though small must be finite," and 

 for these tensions acting through small distances — " we are as little able to 

 account as for the action at any distance, however great." {A Treatise on 

 Electricity and Magnetism. 8vo. 2 vols. 1873 : part I, chap. V, sect. 105 : 

 vol. I, p. 123.) 



* Leibnitz in his memorable controversy with Newton regarding the 

 authorship of the"infinitesimal calculus, took occasion — with a somewhat 

 amusing though ill-tempered irrelevancy, to assail his rival's mechanical 

 philosophy. In a published letter he says : " His philosophy appears to me 

 somewhat strange, and I do not believe that it can ever be established. If 

 all bodies possess gravity, it necessarily follows (however the defenders of 

 the system may speak, and whatever heat they may display), that gravity 



