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Then Professor J. Clerk-Maxwell, of Cambridge, took the matter in hand, and his analysis reduced the puzzling rings to a cloud of meteoric particles a "shower of brickbats" each fragment of which circulates exactly as if it were an independent planet, though of course perturbed and jostled more or less by its fellows.
The considerations that led Clerk-Maxwell to take up the computations may be stated in his own words, as formulated in a paper "On the Motions and Collisions of Perfectly Elastic Spheres."
I cannot give you here the reasons why we must assume that it is throughout all space; you must take this on the word of such men as Sir John Herschel or Professor Clerk-Maxwell, until you can study the question for yourselves.
The idea, then little noticed, had been revived about a century later by William Herapath, and again with some success by J. J. Waterston, of Bombay, about 1846; but it gained no distinct footing until taken in hand by Clausius in 1857 and by Clerk-Maxwell in 1859.
The premature death of James Clerk-Maxwell is a loss to science which appears at present utterly irreparable, for he was engaged in researches that no other man can hope as yet adequately to grasp and follow out; but fortunately it did not occur till he had published his book on "Electricity and Magnetism," one of those immortal productions which exalt one's idea of the mind of man, and which has been mentioned by competent critics in the same breath as the "Principia" itself.
Clerk-Maxwell, who never left his native island to visit our shores, is entitled to honor as a promoter of American science for seeing the lion's paw in the early efforts of Rowland, for which the latter was unable to find a medium of publication in his own country.
Batteries constructed in this way are of low resistance, however, although by arranging several of them in "series," currents of considerable strength can be generated. As yet, however, they are of little practical importance. About the middle of the century Clerk-Maxwell advanced the idea that light waves were really electro-magnetic waves.
It was shown by the late Professor Clerk-Maxwell, that every portion of a circuit is acted upon by a force urging it in such a direction as to make it inclose within its embrace the greatest possible number of lines of force.
By so doing he prepared the way for the subsequent researches of Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell into the properties of electricity and magnetism, and for the investigations by Helmholtz and others into the connexion between electric attraction and chemical affinities.
Such was the verdict pronounced some thirty years ago by James Clerk-Maxwell, one of the very greatest of nineteenth-century physicists, regarding the existence of an all-pervading plenum in the universe, in which every particle of tangible matter is immersed. And this verdict may be said to express the attitude of the entire philosophical world of our day.
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