Faraday As A Discoverer [41]
proportions observed in the combinations of chemistry, its justification rests upon the same basis as that of the principle of gravitation. All that can in strictness be said in either case is that the facts occur as if the principle existed. The manner in which Faraday himself habitually deals with his hypotheses is revealed in this lecture. He incessantly employed them to gain experimental ends, but he incessantly took them down, as an architect removes the scaffolding when the edifice is complete. 'I cannot but doubt,' he says, 'that he who as a mere philosopher has most power of penetrating the secrets of nature, and guessing by hypothesis at her mode of working, will also be most careful for his own safe progress and that of others, to distinguish the knowledge which consists of assumption, by which I mean theory and hypothesis, from that which is the knowledge of facts and laws.' Faraday himself, in fact, was always 'guessing by hypothesis,' and making theoretic divination the stepping-stone to his experimental results. I have already more than once dwelt on the vividness with which he realised molecular conditions; we have a fine example of this strength and brightness of imagination in the present 'speculation.' He grapples with the notion that matter is made up of particles, not in absolute contact, but surrounded by interatomic space. 'Space,' he observes, 'must be taken as the only continuous part of a body so constituted. Space will permeate all masses of matter in every direction like a net, except that in place of meshes it will form cells, isolating each atom from its neighbours, itself only being continuous.' Let us follow out this notion; consider, he argues, the case of a non-conductor of electricity, such for example as shell-lac, with its molecules, and intermolecular spaces running through the mass. In its case space must be an insulator; for if it were a conductor it would resemble 'a fine metallic web,' penetrating the lac in every direction. But the fact is that it resembles the wax of black sealing-wax, which surrounds and insulates the particles of conducting carbon, interspersed throughout its mass. In the case of shell-lac, therefore, space is an insulator. But now, take the case of a conducting metal. Here we have, as before, the swathing of space round every atom. If space be an insulator there can be no transmission of electricity from atom to atom. But there is transmission; hence space is a conductor. Thus he endeavours to hamper the atomic theory. 'The reasoning,' he says, 'ends in a subversion of that theory altogether; for if space be an insulator it cannot exist in conducting bodies, and if it be a conductor it cannot exist in insulating bodies. Any ground of reasoning,' he adds, as if carried away by the ardour of argument, 'which tends to such conclusions as these must in itself be false.' He then tosses the atomic theory from horn to horn of his dilemmas. What do we know, he asks, of the atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which may be called a, and surround it by forces which may be called m; 'to my mind the a or nucleus vanishes, and the substance consists in the powers of m. And indeed what notion can we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought remains on which to hang the imagination of an a independent of the acknowledged forces?' Like Boscovich, he abolishes the atom, and puts a 'centre of force' in its place. With his usual courage and sincerity he pushes his view to its utmost consequences. 'This view of the constitution of matter,' he continues, 'would seem to involve necessarily the conclusion that matter fills all space, or at least all space to which gravitation extends; for gravitation is a property of matter dependent on a certain force, and it is this force which constitutes the matter. In that view matter is not merely mutually penetrable;[1] but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet always retaining its own centre of force.' It is the operation of a mind filled with thoughts