capable of drawing its keeper from only a short distance — aljout 

 an eighth of an inch — whereas, when the keeper was in actual 

 contact with its two poles, it required a pull of a pound or more 

 to wrench it away. The force is at its maximum when the 

 objects are in actual contact, and diminishes by squares as they 

 are separated, so that the power to move a small object, weighing 

 not more than a pennyweight is lost at a little distance. But 

 this power which the magnet exercises, within its peculiar limits, 

 seems to be permanent. We might experiment with it all day, 

 alternately picking up the keeper and wrenching it away, and 

 at the end find that the magnet had lost no appreciable part of 

 its power. We might continue the experiment for a week or 

 a month, and still not find sufficient loss of power to account 

 for the amount of work performed. If we belonged to that 

 class of scientists w4io delight in building up mysteries, we 

 might institute a series of experiments where the exact amount 

 of work performed should be carefully calculated and reduced 

 to foot-pounds, or horse-power, and we might fill columns in 

 the newspapers and pages in the magazines proclaiming the 

 wonders of a force subject to constant expenditure in work, 

 yet not dissipated. As a matter of long experience, we know 

 that the power of a magnet does slowly leak away, not as a 

 direct equivalent of work performed, but as the molecules of the 

 mass gradually lose their alignment: If weakened or exhausted, 

 its power may be fully restored by the same process which 

 originally magnetized it. The fallacy of building up a mystery 

 about it would lie in assuming that the power was inherent in 

 the magnet itself, — /. c, presupposing a definite amount of 

 energy embodied in this bit of metal, and then showing that it 

 had performed many times that equivalent in work. We have 

 seen that the peculiar spiral arrangement in the molecules of the 

 magnet, made of it an attractive conduit for drawmg in the uni- 

 centrating and applying forces everywhere extant in the uni- 

 versal plenum, of which there is an exhaustible supply. As its 

 energies were put forth they were continually renewed through 

 the interstitial ether, and its power was lessened only as its 

 capacity for furnishing a channel for this flow of force was im- 

 paired ; — in other words, as its molecules became disarranged. 

 As long as its capacity remained, it could draw upon the uni- 

 versal forces of nature. There was no chance for it to run out 

 of energy, per se. 



Now that I trust I have made this point clear, I am emboldened 

 to take up the subject of radium and radio-activity. And I 

 cannot avoid the belief that the proponents of the theory of 

 radium have adopted the plan of mystification suggested as pos- 

 sible for magnetism. They have assumed that the power of 

 radium is inherent in the mass itself. They tell us that this 

 metal is capable of giving up its constituent particles, electrons, 



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