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regard to gravitation ; and his views were not well received by the Cambridge 
mathematicians, who seemed determined to maintain at all hazards what they 
had taught so long about the variation of the force of gravitation, and yet they 
inconsistently don’t dispute the conservation theory. But if I were to accept 
some passages in Mr. Laming’s paper I should be unable to know what to 
believe as to this theory of conservation. He says : — 
“ Force, then, operating physically at a constant distance, is never lost, 
as those who teach the ‘ conservation of energy ’ assert that it can be ; nor 
is the immunity from loss under those particular circumstances by any 
means ‘ conservation of force.’ ” 
The force is not lost, but still, he says, we must not say it is conserved ! I 
confess I cannot understand that. Surely, if it is not conserved it must be 
lost. He afterwards speaks — 
“ In disproof of the alleged constancy of energy or force under any form 
whatever.” 
Before, he drew a distinction between force and energy, but here he uses 
them as convertible terms, and says his argument is in disproof of their 
alleged constancy. I do not understand that either ; and the great fault of 
his arguments against the current theories of force appears to me to be simply 
that either he does not quite understand what the current theories are, or 
else he uses the language which we find in all dynamical works in a totally 
different sense. He has attacked the force of gravitation, and he uses an 
extraordinary phraseology, which it baffles me to put any meaning upon at 
all. He says : — 
“ Attraction may possibly move the effect towards its cause or the cause 
towards its effect,” — 
and I do not know in the least what the meaning of that can be. Then he 
actually substitutes the one for the other, and confounds cause with effect, 
saying in one place that “the effect may be a little after the cause as 
a rule,” while in other places there is no difficulty (as I understand him 
to say) that “ the one may be simultaneous with the other.” He further 
says : — 
“ For want of recognizing the several elements of cause, physical science 
has been involved in serious mistakes, being made responsible for what 
mechanical writers call accelerating forces, entirely unknown to nature.” 
Now, no man who has seen a stone fall can profess to want knowledge of an 
accelerating force, as dynamical writers understand the term. Everybody 
knows that a stone sufficiently heavy not to be affected by the air falls with 
a constantly accelerated velocity. The reason the velocity is accelerated is 
because the force is constant, and that motion, once communicated, is kept 
up. The stone beginning to fall has to weigh down and pass through the 
atmosphere with its initial force of attraction, while ever new forces from 
attraction (still pressing it down) are added ; and so we have, in every falling 
