CHAPwLES B. WARRING, PH.D. 217 



little further, and find that to-day most scientists think 

 the undulatory theory is about to follow the corpuscular, 

 being on the verge of being supplanted by a new 

 hypothesis, and that it now seems most probable, that 

 light is only a mode of electrical action. 



And then if these innocents in science turn to read 

 about electricity, they find in one place that it is a single 

 fluid whose excess or deficiency, makes bodies positive 

 or negative ; in another, that it consists of two fluids 

 which separate possess most remarkable powers, but 

 united have none, reversing the old motto, " In union is 

 strength." Later, another scientist tells them that 

 that electricity is not one, nor two, nor any kind of fluid, 

 or substance at all, but only a mode of energy. And 

 then this is denied, and electricity is again a fluid but 

 whether it is one, or two, is uncertain, but however that 

 may be, it is no more a form of energy than is running 

 water. 



These seekers for knowledge by short roads, these rever- 

 ent accepters of all that is said to be science, read that 

 the planetary system was evolved from the sun, the 

 planets having flown off from it under centrifugal action 

 as water flies from a rapidly revolving grindstone. 

 They meditate on this interesting operation, think how 

 nicely it accounts for the orbits all lying pretty nearly in 

 one plane, for the orbital and axial motions being pretty 

 nearly in one direction, and for all the axes being pretty 

 nearly parallel. They get their mental operations ad- 

 justed to such a scheme, and settle down in comfort, 

 satisfied that Laplace was not so much out of the 

 way when he told Napoleon that God in creation was an 

 unnecessary hypothesis. But alas for the instability of 

 all things earthly ! A few years later this quiet was dis- 

 turbed by a parcel of iconoclastic philosophers who 

 recklessly proved that the planets could not have been 

 thrown off from the sun, and that, on the contrary, no 



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