234 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



inconsistency of this concept with the prevailing notions respecting material pres- 

 ence. If we reverse the proposition that a body acts where it is, and say that a 

 bod^ is where it acts, the inconceivability disappears at once." (p. 145). 



The sun then is where the earth is and the earth where the sun is. They envelop 

 each other or are parts of one another, we will suppose he means. Now on either 

 assumption how can gravity be conceived unless by some mechanical theory 

 of relations of one to the other or of parts to a whole. With the theory of the 

 continuity of the total we still require to know how gravity causes a body to move. 

 Is the space between two bodies like a piece of elastic rubber but unlike rubber 

 pulling harder the less it is stretched. If a body is inhere it acts then there is after 

 all no action at a distance. He denies impact and yet reduces his own theory to 

 one of impact. He solves the problem by giving it up. By his own showing 

 then he is guilty of the very metaphysical error he charges upon his opponents. 

 But this abuse of the word metaphysical — this casting it about as a term of oppro- 

 brium is useless and vicious. What is gained by telling our opponents that they 

 demand " that the first rudimentary and unreasoned impressions of the untutored 

 savage shall stand forever as the basis of all possible science? Did the savage 

 have no correct notions of nature ? Were not his experiences and some of his 

 inferences as sound as the best of ours ? Why should these not stand forever as 

 the basis of all possible science ? Shall we reject a truth because it was so 

 patent that even primitive savages saw it ? 



There is really no difference between Hobb's statement that "there can be 

 no cause of motion except in a body contiguous and moved," and that of Stallo 

 that "a body is where it acts." It is different ways they have of putting it. 

 Gravity is a property of matter resulting from mutual interaction and relations. 

 Color, sound, size and shape are the same. With one and all what we seek to 

 know is the exact character of the relations which give rise to them. To assert 

 that "all attempts to reduce gravitation or chemical action to mere impact are 

 aimless and absurd," (p. 163,) is in substance to assert that it is an absolute and 

 insoluble fact instead of a condition outwrought by mutual relations. If gravity 

 is produced by relations we want to know what these relations are. As yet no 

 theory of gravity has been propounded that meets all the conditions of the law. 

 Action at a distance is nonsense, as the Judge virtually concedes. Should we 

 see a tug-boat ahead of a ship pulling it, with neither hawser nor chain between 

 them, common sense would reject with contempt an actio i^i distans explanation 

 from any one. When the valve of a pump becomes the means of raising water 

 from a deep well, we explain it by atmospheric pressure in the water below. 

 How much easier it would have been to call it actio in distans — the valve attracts 

 the water because it is where it acts or attracts — /. e. on the water and the water 

 in it. This would have been a far easier way of disposing of it, although scarcely 

 as conceivable as nature's abhorrence of a vacuum. 



That not one only but several theories of gravity might be framed answering 

 to the conditions of the law so far as these conditions are yet known is quite pos- 

 sible. Although such a theory may be of little practical utility and perhaps be 



