8 THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 
takes those forms or modes. This accounts for the fact that 
we get heat without electricity and magnetism, and that 
when we have electricity and magnetism we have heat. It 
also accounts for the apparently occasional character of 
electricity and magnetism, on which subjects much has to be 
said later on. 
*Gravitation, as conceived in the Newtonian philosophy, 
does not exist—is purely imaginary and fallacious; but, as 
the force that keeps the planets in their orbits is centripetal, 
the mathematical problems stand. So for the future you 
may trust Newton’s mathematics, but not his philosophy. 
But, of course, it is true that objects vorticate towards the 
earth as a result of the action of the ether, while they 
gravitate to it in a somewhat similar manner to the way in 
which a piece of wood floating in the water may be said to 
gravitate towards the shore by the action of the incoming 
tide. 
Take-a bar magnet, and break it as often as you will, the 
portions are still magnetic, leading to the conclusion that 
the molecules are magnetic, and exert such an influence upon 
the ether by their motion as to drag smaller objects to the 
magnet. Magnify one of these tiny magnets to the size of 
the earth, and imagine a man standing upon it: he sees that 
smaller objects approach it, and wishing to find a cause that - 
will account for the phenomena, and not being able to see 
the ether, he imagines the fictions of the inherent attraction 
of matter, and consequent action at a distance. But his 
supposition is not according to fact, it is material motion in 
and by the mass and the ether, and action by contact, that 
accounts for the phenomena. Combine the varied motions 
*By the Newtonion I mean that philosophy that starting from a 
state of rest imagines the motion of matter to have been caused by 
the mutual attractions of its smallest portions. ; 
