They
would, evidently, be still more insufficient if used to explain
certain effects produced on matter by light, which could not, without
grave difficulties, be attributed to movement; for instance, the
phenomena of electrification under the influence of certain
radiations, or, again, chemical reactions such as photographic
impressions.
The problem had to be approached by another road. The electromagnetic
theory was a step in advance, but it comes to a standstill, so to
speak, at the moment when the ether penetrates into matter. If we wish
to go deeper into the inwardness of the phenomena, we must follow, for
example, Professor Lorentz or Dr Larmor, and look with them for a mode
of representation which appears, besides, to be a natural consequence
of the fundamental ideas forming the basis of Hertz's experiments.
The moment we look upon a wave in the ether as an electromagnetic
wave, a molecule which emits light ought to be considered as a kind of
excitant. We are thus led to suppose that in each radiating molecule
there are one or several electrified particles, animated with a
to-and-fro movement round their positions of equilibrium, and these
particles are certainly identical with those electrons the existence
of which we have already admitted for so many other reasons.
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