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Updated: June 16, 2025


It is clear that if this rate of motion depends upon elasticity, the elasticity must be of an entirely different type from that belonging to matter, and cannot be defined in any such terms as are employed for matter. If one considers gravitative phenomena, the difficulty is enormously increased.

Everything then that possesses gravitative attraction is matter in the sense in which that term is used in this law. If there be any other substance in the universe that is not thus subject to gravitation, then it is improper to call it matter, otherwise the law should read, "Some particles of matter attract," etc., which will never do.

He would reply, however, that there are better means of accomplishing these purposes. In the same spirit he condemns the study even of the solar system, when extended to any planets but those which are visible to the naked eye, and which alone exert an appreciable gravitative influence on the earth.

I am not aware that either Sir Robert Ball or Sir George Darwin have adduced this highly volcanic condition of the moon's surface as a phenomenon which can only be explained by our satellite having been thrown off a very much larger body, whose gravitative force was sufficient to acquire and retain the enormous quantity of gases and of water which we possess, and which are absolutely essential for that special form of cone-building volcanic action which the moon exhibits in so pre-eminent a degree.

If gravitative attraction took any such appreciable time to go from one astronomical body to another as does light, it would make very considerable differences in the paths of the planets and the earth. Indeed, if the velocity of gravitation were less than a million times greater than that of light, its effects would have been discovered long ago.

Attraction, whether gravitative or capillary, produces the spherical form; the spherical form does not produce attraction. And crystalline polarities produce crystalline structure and form; crystalline structure and form do not produce crystalline polarities.

Thenceforth the two bodies were parted, except for the gravitative attraction which impelled them to revolve about their common centre of gravity, and except for the light and heat they might exchange with one another. The first stages after the parting of the spheres of earth and moon appear to have been essentially the same in each body.

The explanation, in effect, necessarily supposes that the proper motions of the celestial bodies are insensible compared with the motion of the gravitative fluid.

The most characteristic and invariable of these movements is that by which each of the planetary spheres, as well as the satellites, describes an orbit around the gravitative centre which has the most influence upon it the sun.

To deduce the laws of the heavenly motions, we require not only to know the law of a rectilineal and that of a gravitative force, but the existence of both these forces in the celestial regions, and even their relative amount. We shall hereafter have occasion to return to this distinction, and to dwell on it at such length as dispenses with the necessity of further insisting on it here.

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