﻿Dr. Guyot on the Forms and Forces of Matter, 415 



when their interior pressure is diminished, they will adhere to- 

 gether and present all the properties of a solid body. Further, 

 if the little spheres were separated from one another by little 

 tubular washers of caoutchouc between their communicating ori- 

 fices, and if half the air were taken out of the spheres either by 

 previous heating or by the air-pump, the imitation of the solid 

 body so resulting would present all the appearances of contrac- 

 tion by cold, of expansion and fusion by heat ; all the phenomena 

 of extension by stretching or by rarefaction, of contraction by 

 external pressure, and all those of destruction by mechanical 

 rending, or by solution in a rarefied medium. Any instrument- 

 maker could thus construct a solid body which would be elastic, 

 expansible, dilatable, fusible, and soluble. 



The approximation of the atoms of bodies of ponderable 

 matter may therefore be due to the rarefaction of the imponde- 

 rable fluid, and consequently to the diminution of its pressure 

 in the space separating the atoms of the same body. And this 

 approximation will be greatest and strongest accordingly as the 

 interior rarefaction is greater, the exterior pressure being in- 

 versely as the interior. This hypothesis would be more than 

 probable, it would be true, if it were shown that the vibration of 

 the atoms of bodies may, and actually does, cause a rarefaction 

 in the sphere of activity of each of the atoms. 



If this proof could be given, we should be obliged to admit 

 that attraction is a mechanical force composed (1) of the rare- 

 faction of the sether in the interior of substances, of media, of 

 ] heavenly bodies, brought about by the power of vibration of the 

 I atoms of ponderable matter ; (2) of the reaction of the pressure 

 of the exterior sether upon substances, media and heavenly 

 bodies — a reaction measured by the general tension of the im- 

 ponderable and incoercible fluid which constitutes the mother- 

 liquor* of the world, the universal medium. 



To gain a rational idea of the phenomena which take place in 

 the physical world inaccessible to our direct means of observa- 

 tion, we must have recourse to analogies, to examples found ) 

 amongst the class of phenomena which are visible, which are 

 appreciable. I therefore said to myself thirty-seven yeai*3 , , 

 ago : — ^ 



If it be true that the atoms of ponderable matter on rapidly 

 striking in their vibrations the setherial elastic medium in a 

 state of tension in which they are plunged rarefy the aether 

 around them and diminish its pressure in the spheres of their 

 activity, and if this diminution of pressure results in the 



* Eaux meres. The apparent grotesqueness is of course the fault of the 

 translator ; the translator, who is the editor, imagines the expression to be 

 equally grotesque and admirable. — F. G. 



