Hannequin,
by an English scholar, James Croll) the distribution of the effects of
the attracting force of a mass over the manifold particles which may
successively enter the field of its action in no way diminishes the
attraction it exercises on each of them respectively, a thing which is
seen nowhere else in nature.
Nevertheless it is possible, by means of certain hypotheses, to
construct interpretations whereby the appropriate movements of an
elastic medium should explain the facts clearly enough. But these
movements are very complex, and it seems almost inconceivable that the
same medium could possess simultaneously the state of movement
corresponding to the transmission of a luminous phenomenon and that
constantly imposed on it by the transmission of gravitation.
Another celebrated hypothesis was devised by Lesage, of Geneva. Lesage
supposed space to be overrun in all directions by currents of
_ultramundane_ corpuscles. This hypothesis, contested by Maxwell, is
interesting. It might perhaps be taken up again in our days, and it is
not impossible that the assimilation of these corpuscles to electrons
might give a satisfactory image.
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